?¥ 



^(^H"l 



AN 

AMERICAN HISTORY 



BY 



DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY, Ph.D. 

Barnard College, Columbia University, New York 



rerum cognoscere causas 



GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN TfJRANCISCG 



COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY 

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

C 815.5 



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CINN AND COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



EDITORIAL PREFACE 



The present volume represents the newer tendencies in his- 
torical writing. Its aim is not to tell over once more the old 
story in the old way, but to give the emphasis to those factors 
in our national development which appeal to us as most vital 
from the standpoint of to-day. However various may be the ad- 
vantages of historical study, one of them, and perhaps the most 
unmistakable, is to explain prevailing conditions and institutions 
by showing how they have come about. This is our best way 
of understanding the present and of placing ourselves in a posi- 
tion to participate intelligently in the solution of the great 
problems of social and political betterment which it is the duty 
of all of us to face. Dr. Muzzey has not, therefore, tabulated 
a series of historical occurrences under successive presidential 
administrations, but has carefully selected the great phases in 
the development of our country and treated them in a coherent 
fashion. He has exhibited great skill in so ordering them that 
they form a continuous narrative which will secure and retain 
the interest of the student. There is no question at any point 
of the importance of the topics selected and their' relation to 
our whole complex development. All minor, uncorrelated mat- 
ters, such as the circumstances attending each colonial planta- 
tion, the tactics and casualties of military campaigns, the careers 
of men of slight influence in high office, are boldly omitted on 
the ground that they make no permanent impression on the 
student's mind and serve only to confuse and blur the 
larger issues. 

Some special features of the book are its full discussion of 
the federal power in connection with the Constitution, its em- 
phasis on the westward-moving frontier as the most constant 



iv Editorial Preface 

and potent force in our history, and its recognition of the influ- 
ence of economic factors on our sectional rivalries and political 
theories. It will be noted that from one fourth to one fifth of 
the volume deals with the history of our country since the Civil 
War and Reconstruction. Hitherto there has been a reluctance 
on the part of those who have prepared textbooks on our his- 
tory to undertake the responsibility of treating those recent 
phases of our social, political, and industrial history which are 
really of chief concern to us. Dr. Muzzey has undertaken the 
arduous task of giving the great problems and preoccupations 
of to-day their indispensable historic setting. This I deem the 
very special merit of his work, and am confident that it will 
meet with eager approbation from many who have long been 
dissatisfied with the conventional textbook, which leaves a great 
gap between the past and the present. 

JAMES HARVEY ROBINSON 
Columbia University 



CONTENTS 



PART I 
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE ENGLISH 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The New World 

The Discovery of America 3 

A Century of Exploration 13 

II. The English Colonies 

The Old Dominion 27 

The New England Settlements 35 

The Proprietary Colonies 52 

The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century . . 67 

HI. The Struggle with France for North America 

The Rise of New France 81 

The Fall of New France 92 



PART II 

SEPARATION OF THE COLONIES FROM ENGLAND 
IV. British Rule in America 

The Authority of Parliament in the Colonies 107 

Taxation without Representation 112 

The Punishment of Massachusetts 120 

V. The Birth of the Nation 

The Declaration of Independence . . . .127 

The Revolutionary War ... .... 136 

Peace 150 

V 



vi Conteiits 

PART III 
THE NEW REPUBLIC 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI. The Constitution 

The Critical Period - • i59 

"A More Perfect Union" i66 

The Federal Power - • 1 73 

VI I. Federalists and Republicans 

Launching the Government . 184 

The Reign of Federalism 193 

The Jeffersonian Policies 205 

The War of 1812 213 



PART IV 

NATIONAL VERSUS SECTIONAL INTERESTS 

VIII. The Growth of a National Consciousness 

" The Era of Good Feeling " 229 

The Monroe Doctrine 236 

IX. Sectional Interests 

Facing Westward 245 

The Favorite Sons . . .251 

An Era of Hard Feelings 259 

The "Tariff of Abominations" 267 

X. " The Reign of Andrew Jackson " 

Nullification 277 

The War on the Bank 282 

A New Party 289 



Contents , vii 



PART V 
SLAVERY AND THE WEST 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XI. The Gathering Cloud 

Slavery in the Colonies 303 

The Missouri Compromise 308 

The Abolitionists 316 

XII. Texas 

Westward Expansion 328 

The " Reoccupation " of Oregon and the 

" Reannexation " OF Texas 336 

The Mexican War 342 

XIII. The Compromise of 1850 

The New Territory 351 

The Omnibus Bill 35^ 

A Four Years' Truce 364 



PART VI 

THE CRISIS OF DISUNION 

XIV. Approaching the Crisis 

The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise and 
the Formation of the Republican Party 379 

" Bleeding Kansas " 3^8 

"A House divided against Itself" .... 395 

XV. Secession 

The Election of Abraham Lincoln .... 405 

The Southern Confederacy 414 

The Fall of Fort Sumter 421 



viii ^ Contents 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XVI. The Civil War 

The Opposing Forces . 430 

From Bull Run to Gettysburg .... 436 

The Triumph of the North 452 

Emancipation 469 

XVII. The Era of Reconstruction 

How THE North used its Victory .... 477 
The Recovery of the Nation ..... 489 



PART VII 

THE POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF 
THE REPUBLIC SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 

XVIII. Twenty Years of Republican Supremacy 

The New Industrial Age 505 

The Republican Machine 510 

The Party Revolution of 1884 520 

XIX. The Cleveland Democracy 

A People's President 533 

A Billion-Dollar Country 544 

Problems of Cleveland's Second Term . . ^t^^ 

XX. Entering the Twentieth Century 

The Spanish War and the Philippines . .574 

The Roosevelt Policies 591 

Present-Day Problems 609 

APPENDIX I 627 

APPENDIX II 632 

INDEX 649 



LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



George Washington Frontispiece 

Types of Indian Dwellings, — the Pueblo, the Tepee, and the 

Long House 24 

Portrait of John Smith 3° 

Pilgrim Monument at Provincetown, Mass 3^ 

Facsimile of Bradford MS. "History of Plimoth Plantation" 38 

La Salle taking Possession of Louisiana 86 

Franklin at the Court of France, 1778 138 

Group of Famous Revolutionary Buildings 1 54 

The Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States . . .180 

Alexander Hamilton 192 

Interview between Washington and Citizen Genet 196 

Thomas Jefferson 206 

John C. Calhoun 255 

Henry Clay 256 

Andrew Jackson • 278 

Webster's Reply to Hayne 280 

Sherman's Army destroying the Railroads in Georgia . . . 462 
Lee's Letter to Grant respecting the Surrender of the Confed- 
erate Army of Northern Virginia 465 

Abraham Lincoln 468 

White House, after the Remodeling of 1902 506 

Grover Cleveland 534 

President Taft 608 



LIST OF FULL-PAGE AND DOUBLE- 
PAGE MAPS 



PAGE 



Voyages of Discovery in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries lo 
Early Maps of America (Lenox, Finaeus, Miinster, Mercator) i8, 19 

Proprietary Grants made by the Stuart Kings 54 

French Explorations on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi . 88 

The French and Indian Wars 99 

An Old View of the Siege of Quebec 100 

England's Acquisitions in America in the French Wars of 

1689-1763 • . . . . 102 

The United States in 1 783 152 

The Louisiana Purchase Territory, with States subsequently 

made from it 210 

Routes to the West, 1 81 5-1 825 248 

The Acquisition of the Far West, 1 845-1 850 350 

Canals and Railroads operated in 1850 368 

The Presidential Election of i860 412 

The Chief Campaigns of the Civil War 438 

Territorial Growth of the United States 548 

The Greater United States and the Panama Canal Routes . .602 
Progress of the Referendum and the Initiative 612 



AMERICAN HISTORY 

PART I. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF 
THE ENGLISH 



PART I. THE ESTABLISHMENT 
OF THE ENGLISH 

CHAPTER I 



THE NEW WORLD 

The Discovery of America 

HE discovery of America was an accident, i. Trade 

The brave sailors of the fifteenth century Europe and 

who turned the prows of their tiny vessels 1^^^ J^^L^^f,* 
^ -^ in the Middle 

into the strange waters of the Atlantic Ages 
were seeking a new way to " the Indies," 
— a term vaguely used to denote not In- 
dia alone but also China, Japan, and all 
the Far Eastern countries of Asia. From 
these lands western Europe had for cen- 
turies been getting many of its luxuries 
and comforts. Ever-lengthening traders' caravans brought Orien- 
tal rugs, flowered silks, gems, spices, porcelains, damasks, dyes, 
drugs, perfumes, and precious woods across the plains and pla- 
teaus of middle Asia to the Persian Gulf and the Black Sea, 
or crept along the hot borders of the Arabian peninsula to the 
headwaters of the Red Sea. At the ports of the Black Sea and 
the Mediterranean the fleets of Venice and Genoa were waiting 
to carry the Indian merchandise to the distributing centers of 
southern Europe, whence it was conveyed over the Alpine passes 
or along the Rhone valley to the busy, prosperous towns of 
France, Germany, England, and the Netherlands. 

3 




4 The Establishment of the English 

2. The Turks But in the fourteenth century the Osmanli Turks — an aggres- 
trade routes s^^^' bigoted Mohammedan race — began to block the path of the 
(1300-1450) Eastern traders. The Turks were determined not only to drive 

the Christians out of Asia, but to cross over into Europe them- 
selves. In 1453 they captured the great city of Constantinople, 
the capital of the Byzantine, or eastern Roman, Empire. In the 
following decades they dislodged the '' Franks " (as they called 
all Europeans) from Syria, Asia Minor, and the islands of the 
^gean Sea. The Venetian and Genoese trade was ruined by 
these wars, which practically closed the eastern end of the Medi- 
terranean to European vessels, and made it of the utmost im- 
portance to discover new routes to the rich treasure lands of 
the Indies. 

3. The Under the stimulus of this practical need the study of geog- 
mafuime*' raphy and the science of navigation flourished in the fifteenth 
flx^^^^^u'^ *^® century. Hundreds of J)ortolani, or sailing charts, were drawn 
century by the Italian and Portuguese mariners. Six new editions of the 

"Geography" of Ptolemy were published between 1472 and 
1492.^ The compass and the astrolabe (for measuring latitude) 
were perfected. Ships were designed to sail close to the wind 
and to stand the buffeting of the high ocean waves. Before the 
end of the fifteenth century Portuguese sailors had pushed nearly 
a thousand miles westward into the uncharted Atlantic, and were 
creeping mile by mile down the western coast of Africa. In 
i486 Bartholomew Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and 
had not his crew refused to go farther from home, he might 
have stood out across the Indian Ocean and reached the Spice 
Islands of the East and all the cities of the Chinese Empire. 

4. christo- While Dias was making his way back to Portugal an Italian 
seeks aid^or ^ mariner from Genoa, named Cristoforo Colombo, better known 

a westward j^y j^jg Latinized name of Columbus, who had become convinced 

voyage to the ^ ' 

Indies by his geographical studies that he could reach the Indies by 

1 Claudius Ptolomaeus, a Greek astronomer, wrote a " Geography " about the 
year 150 a.d., which remained the standard work on the shape and size of 
Europe, Asia, and Africa (the known world of the Middle Ages) until after the 
great voyages of the fifteenth century. 



The New World 5 

sailing westward across the Atlantic, was seeking aid for his 
project at the courts of Europe. He first applied to the king 
of Portugal, in whose service he had already made several voy- 
ages down the African coast. On being repulsed he transferred 
his request to Ferdinand and Isabella, the sovereigns of Spain, 
and at the same time sent his brother Bartholomew, who had 
been with Dias on his famous voyage, to solicit the support of 
King Henry VII of England. 

Columbus had despaired of enlisting the interest of the Span- 5. Ferdinand 
ish sovereigns, and was about to start for Paris, when the influ- of Spain fur- 
ence of some important persons at the Spanish court procured fun^g^^^prii 
him a favorable audience. He met Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 
their gorgeous camp before Granada, from which city they had 
just driven out the last of the Moorish rulers in Spain. In the 
auspicious moment of victory the sovereigns were moved to 
grant Columbus financial aid for his project, to confer upon him 
a title of nobility, and to create him admiral of all the lands and 
islands which he might find on his voyage. This was in April, 
1492. By the following August, Columbus was ready to start 
from Palos, with three small ships and about a hundred sailors, 
on what proved to be the most momentous voyage in history. 

Columbus was a student as well as a man of affairs. His son 6. Columbus's 
Ferdinand tells us in his '' Biography" that his father was influ- knowi^dgr 
enced by the old Arabian and Greek astronomers. There are 
geographical works in existence with notes in Columbus's hand- 
writing in the margin. He shared with the best scholars of his 
day the long-established belief in the sphericity of the earth.^ 
As a guide for his voyage he had a chart made for the king of 
Portugal in 1474, by the Florentine astronomer Toscanelli, to 

1 The popular idea that Columbus " discovered that the earth is round " is 
entirely false. More than eighteen hundred years before Columbus's day the 
Greek philosopher Aristotle demonstrated the sphericity of the earth from the 
altitude of the stars observed from various places. Roger Bacon, a Franciscan 
friar, in 1267 even collected passages from the writers of classical antiquity to 
prove that the ocean separating Spain from the eastern shore of Asia was not 
very wide. The merit of Columbus was that he proved the truth of these theories 
by courageous action. 



7. Tosca- 
nelli's map 
of 1474 



6 The Establishment of the English 

demonstrate that the Indies could be reached by sailing west- 
ward. Toscanelli had calculated the size of the earth almost 
exactly, but, misled by the description of travelers to the Far 
East, he had made the continent of Asia extend eastward almost 
all the way across the Pacific Ocean, so that Cipango (or Japan) 
on his map occupied the actual position of Mexico. Columbus 
therefore, although not deceived as to the length of voyage 




The Toscanelli Map of 1474 
The outline of the Western Continent is in red, showing its actual position 



8. Columbus 
crosses the 
Atlantic, 
September- 
October, 1492 



necessary to reach land, was deceived to the day of his death 
as to the land he reached at the end of his voyage. 

The little trio of vessels, favored by clear skies and a steady 
east wind, made the passage from the Canary Islands to the 
Bahamas in five weeks. No storms racked the ships, but still 
it was a fearsome voyage over the quiet seas. To the trembling 
crews each mile westward was a further venture into the great 
mysterious " sea of darkness," where horrible monsters might 
be waiting to engulf them, where the fabled mountain of load- 
stone might draw the nails from their ships, or the dreaded 



The New World 



boring worm puncture their wooden keels. The auspicious and 
unvarying east wind itself was a menace. How could they ever 
get home again in the face of it '^. And if the world was round, 
as their captain said, were they not daily sliding down its slope, 
which they could never remount? Dark faces and ominous 
whisperings warned Columbus of his danger. Early in October 
there were overt signs of mutiny, but the great pilot quelled the 
discontent, saying that complain as they might, he must reach 
the Indies, and would sail 
on until with God's help he 
found them. His courage 
was rewarded, for the very 
next night he espied a light 
ahead, and when day dawned 
(October 12, 1492) the sandy 
beach of an island lay spread 
before the eyes of his wearied 
crew. Surrounded by the 
naked awe-stricken natives, 
Columbus took solemn pos- 
session of the land in the 
name of Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, and called it San Sal- 
vador (" Holy Saviour "). 

He then continued his voyage among the small islands of the 9. He is dis 
Bahamas, seeking the mainland of Cathay (China) 




Columbus's Flagship, the Sattta Maria 



\\i\. I- appointed in 
When he not finding 



reached the apparently interminable coast of Cuba, he was sure t^e cities of 
i^^ J ' Cathay, and 

that he was at the gates of the kingdom of the Great Khan, returns to 
and that the cities of China with their fabulous wealth would 
soon hear the voice of his Arab interpreter, presenting to the 
monarch of the East the greetings and gifts of the sovereigns 
of Spain. He was doomed to disappointment. The misfortunes 
which dogged his steps to the end of his life now began. Martin 
Pinzon, pilot of the Finta, deserted him on the coast of Cuba. 
His largest caravel, the Santa Maria ^ was wrecked on Christmas 



8 



The Establishment of the English 



10. Colum- 
bus's later 
voyages 
(1493-1502) ; 
his disgrace 
and death 
(1506) 



Day on the coast of Hayti, which he mistook for the long-sought 
Cipango, and he hastened back to Spain in the remaining vessel, 
the tiny Nina. He was hailed with enthusiasm by the nation, 
and loaded with honors by his sovereigns, who had no suspicion 
that he had failed to reach the islands lying off the rich lands of 
the East, or that he had discovered still richer lands in the west. 
Columbus made three more voyages to the "Indies" in 1493, 
1498, and 1502. On the voyage of 1498 he discovered the 
mainland of South America, and in 1502 he sailed along the 
coast of Central America, vainly attempting to find a strait 




The Maura Medal (Spain), struck to commemorate the Four-Hundredth 
Anniversary of Columbus's Discovery of America 

which would let him through to the main coast of Cathay. All 
the while the clouds of misfortune were gathering about him. 
His costly expeditions had so far brought no wealth to Spain. 
While his ships were skirting the pestilential coasts of South 
America, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama had reached the real 
Indies by the Cape of Good Hope, and brought back to Lisbon 
cargoes of spices, satins, damask, ivory, and gold (see map, 
p. 10). The Spanish sovereigns were jealous of the laurels of 
the Portuguese mariners. Mutiny, shipwreck, and fever were 
lighter evils for Columbus to contend with than the plots of 
his enemies and the envious disappointment of the grandees of 



The New World 9 

Spain. One of the Spanish governors of Hayti sent him home 
in irons. His little sons, Diego and Ferdinand, who were pages 
in the queen's service, were jeered at as they passed through 
the courtyard of the Alhambra : " There go the sons of the Ad- 
miral of the Mosquitoes, who has discovered lands of vanity and 
delusion as the miserable graves of Castilian gentlemen." Re- 
turning from his fourth voyage in 1504, he found his best friend 
at court, Queen Isabella, on her deathbed ; and bowed with 
discouragement, illness, humiliation, and poverty, he followed 
her to the grave in 1506. So passed away in misery and ob- 
scurity a man whose service to mankind was beyond calculation. 
His wonderful voyage of 1492 had linked together the two hemi- 
spheres of our planet, and " mingled the two streams of human 
life which had flowed for countless ages apart " (John Fiske).^ 

Had Columbus and his fellow voyagers known that a solid 11. Pope 
barrier of land reaching from arctic to antarctic snows, and yi's "de- 
beyond that another ocean vaster than the one they had just ^^^^}^^^ 
crossed, lay between the islands they mistakenly called the 
Indies and the real Indies of the East, they would have prob- 
ably abandoned the thought of a western route and returned to 
contest with Portugal the search for the Indies via the Cape of 
Good Hope. As it was, the Spanish sovereigns, confident that 
their pilots had reached the edge of Asia, asked of Pope 
Alexander VI a " bull " (or formal papal decree) admitting them 
to a share with Portugal in all lands and islands which should 
be discovered in the search for the Indies. The Pope, who was 
quite generally recognized in Europe as the arbiter of inter- 
national disputes, acceded to the request, and in his bull of 1493 

1 Columbus was by no means the first European to visit the shores of the 
western continent. There are records of a dozen or so pre-Columbian voyages 
across the Atlantic by Arabians, Japanese, Welshmen, Irishmen, and French- 
men, besides the very detailed account in the Icelandic sagas, or stories of ad- 
venture, of the visit of the Norsemen to the shores of the western world in the 
year looo. Under Lief the Lucky the Norsemen built booths or huts and re- 
mained for a winter on sorrie spot along the coast of Labrador or New England. 
But these voyages of the Norsemen to America five hundred years before 
Columbus were not of importance, because they were not followed up by explo- 
ration and permanent settlement. 



The Nezv World 1 1 

divided the undiscovered world between Spain and Portugal by 
a " demarcation " line, which was determined the next year at 
370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. All lands discov- 
ered to the west of this line were to belong to Spain ; those to 
the east, to Portugal (see map, p. 10). 

The Pope's bull, however, did not deter the other nations of 12. John 
Europe from taking part in the search for the Indies by both the the mainland 

eastern and the western routes. The honor of being the first of ?* ^^LT:^^^' 

'=' em conti- 

the mariners of Columbus's time to reach the mainland of the nent, 1497 
western continent belongs to John Cabot, an Italian in the serv- 
ice of King Henry VII of England. In the summer of 1497, 
while the Spanish navigators were still tarrying among the West 
Indies, Cabot sailed with one ship from Bristol, and after plant- . 
ing the banner of England somewhere on the coast of Labrador, 
returned to plan a larger expedition. The voyage of 1 49 7 created 
great excitement in England for a time. '^ This Venetian of 
ours who went in search of new islands is returned," wrote an 
Italian in London to his brother at home ; " his name is Zuan 
Cabot, and they all call him the great admiral. Vast honor is 
paid him, and he dresses in silk. These English run after him 
like mad people." The more prosaic account book of Henry VII 
contains the entry: ^' To hym that found the new isle lO;^." But 
interest in Cabot's voyage soon died out. The importance of the 
voyage for us is that it was for two centuries made the basis of 
England's claims to the whole mainland of North America. 

Cabot's name is not connected with mountain, river, state, or 13, The 
town in the New World, but the name of another Italian became Am^rfgo^ 

the birth name of the continent. Amerie^o Vespucci was a yespucci 

^ _ ^ (Amencus 

Florentine merchant established at Cadiz in Spain. He helped vespucius), 

fit out Columbus's fleet, and catching the fever for maritime ad- 
venture, he joined the goodly company of navigators. In 1501 
he made a most remarkable voyage in the service of the king 
of Portugal. Sailing from Lisbon, he struck the coast of South 
America at Cape San Roque, and running south to the thirty- 
fourth parallel, found the constant westward trend of the coast 



1 2 The Establishment of the English 

carrying him across the Pope's line separating Portuguese from 

Spanish territory. So he turned south by east into the Atlantic, 

and reached the icebound crags of a desert island, 54° south 

latitude. Again heading northeast, he struck boldly across the 

south Atlantic and reached the coast of Sierra Leone in a straight 

course of four thousand miles (see map, p. 10). This voyage, 

which lasted over a year, showed that the land along whose 

northern shores the Spanish navigators had sailed was not an 

island off the southeastern coast of Asia, but a great continent. 

It led also to the naming of the western continent. 

14. The Vespucci wrote to Italian friends : ^' We found what may be 

reveaie™jf ' called a new world . . . since most of the ancients said that there 

Vespucci's 

"SfriclT' Nuc to &h?partes funt latlusjuftratec/8d alfa 
^^ quattapats per Americu Vefpuuu(vt ix\ fequenti 

bus audietut )inuenta eft/qua nonvxdeo cur quis 
iure vetet'ab Americo inuentore fagacis ingenrj vi 
to Amcrigen quafi Americi terra / fiue Atnericam 
dicenda: ^ 

Facsimile of Page in Waldseemiiller's Edition of Ptolemy's ''Geography" 
(1507), suggesting the Name of America 

was no continent below the equator." A^espucci's " new world," 
then, was a new southern continent. In 1507 the faculty of the 
college of St. Die, in the Vosges Mountains, were preparing a 
new edition of Ptolemy's '' Geography." Martin Waldseemiiller 
wrote an introduction to the edition, in which he included one 
of Vespucci's letters, and made the suggestion that since in addi- 
tion to Europe, Asia, and Africa, ^^ another fourth part has been 
discovered by Americus Vespucius . . . I do not see what fairly 
hinders us from calling it A?ne?'ige or America, viz., the land of 
Americus.'^ At the same time Waldseemiiller made a map of 
the world on which he placed the new continent and named it 
America. This map was lost for centuries, and scholars were 
almost convinced that it never existed, when in the summer of 



The New World 1 3 

1 90 1 an Austrian professor found it in the library of a castle in 
Wiirttemberg. It had evidently circulated enough before its dis- 
appearance to fix the name ^' America " on the new southern 
continent, whence it spread to the land north of the Isthmus of 
Panama.^ 

The admirers of Columbus from the sixteenth century to 15. Why the 
the twentieth have cried out against the injustice of the name was not "^ 

"America" instead of " Columbia" for the New World, "as if °amedfor 

ITS rea.! 

the Sistine Madonna had been called not by Raphael's name, discoverer, 

Columbus 
but by the name of the man who first framed it." But there 

was no injustice done, at least with intent. " America " was a 

name invented for what was thought to be a netv tvorld south 

of the equator, whereas Columbus and his associates believed 

that they had only found a new way to the Old World. When it 

was realized that Columbus had really discovered the new world 

of which Vespucci wrote, it was too late to remedy the mistake 

in the name. So it came about that this continent was named, 

by an obscure German professor in a French college, after an 

Italian navigator in the service of the king of Portugal. 

A Century of Exploration 

From the death of Columbus (1506) to the planting of the 16. The 
first permanent English colony on the shores of America (1607) pioration^S" 
just a century elapsed, — a century filled with romantic voyages the s^ixteenth 
and thrilling tales of exploration and conquest in the New World. 
Nowadays men explore new countries for scientific study of 
the native races or the soil and its products, or to open up new 
markets for trade and develop the hidden resources of the land ; 
but in the romantic sixteenth century Spanish noblemen tramped 

1 Although Waldseemiiller himself dropped the name " America " when he 
realized that this was, after all, the land discovered by Columbus in 1498, and in 
the same edition of Ptolemy for which he had written the Introduction, labeled 
South America " terra incognita " (" unknown land "), the name " America " soon 
reappeared and gradually spread to the northern continent until, in 1541, 
the geographer M creator applied it to the whole mainland from Labrador to 
Patagonia. 



14 The Establishment of the English 

through the swamps and tangles of Florida to find the fountain 
of perpetual youth, or toiled a thousand miles over the western 
desert, lured by the dazzling gold of fabled cities of splendor. 
The sixteenth century was furthermore a century of intense reli- 
gious belief ; so we find a grim spirit of missionary zeal mingled 
with the thirst for gold. The cross was planted in the wilderness, 
and the soldiers knelt in thanksgiving on the ground stained by 
the blood of their heretical neighbors. 

17. Eastern Of course it was Asia with its fabulous wealth, not America 
object of the with its savage tracts and tribes, which was the real goal of 

explorers' European explorers. Until even far into the seventeenth century 
search r r y 

the mariners were searching the northern coast of America for 
a way around the continent, and hailing the broad mouth of each 
new river as a possible passage to the Indies. Columbus in his 
fourth voyage (1502) had skirted the coast of Central America 
to find the passage to Cathay, and Vespucci in his great voy- 
age of 1501-1502 had followed the South American coast far 
enough to demonstrate that he had found a '' new world," even 
if he had not discovered a gateway to the East. 

18. Magei- With Columbus and Vespucci we must rank a third mariner, 
saiis^ar^ound Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese in the service of the king 
i^foT^M*^' ^^ Spain. In September, 15 19, Magellan with five ships and 

about three hundred men started on what proved to be perhaps 
the most romantic voyage in history. Reaching the Brazilian 
coast, he made his way south, and after quelling a dangerous 
mutiny in his winter quarters on the bleak coast of Patagonia, 
entered the narrow straits (since called by his name) at the 
extremity of South America. A stormy passage of five weeks 
through the tortuous narrows brought him out on the calm 
waters of an ocean to which, in grateful relief, he gave the 
name " Pacific." ^ Magellan met worse trials than storms, how- 
ever, when he put out into the Pacific. Week after week he 

1 Magellan was not the first European to see that great ocean. Several years 
earlier the Spaniard Balboa, with an exploring party from Hayti, had crossed the 
isthmus now named Panama, and discovered the Pacific, to which he gave the 
pame " South Sea." 



1519-1522 



The New World 1 5 

sailed westward across the smiling but apparently interminable 
sea, little dreaming that he had embarked on waters which cover 
nearly half the globe. Hunger grew to starvation, thirst to mad- 
ness. Twice on the voyage of ten thousand miles land appeared 
to the eyes of the famished sailors, only to prove a barren, 
rocky island. At last the inhabited islands of Australasia were 
reached. Magellan himself was killed in a fight with the natives 
of the Philippine Islands, but his sole seaworthy ship, the Vic- 
toria, continued westward across the Indian Ocean, and rounding 
the Cape of Good Hope, reached Lisbon with a crew of eighteen 
"ghostlike men," September 6, 1522. 

Magellan's ship had circumnavigated the globe. His wonder- 19. signifi- 
ful voyage proved conclusively the sphericity of the earth, and Magellan's 
showed the great preponderance of water over land. It demon- voyage 
strated that America was not a group of islands off the Asiatic 
coast (as Columbus had thought), nor even a southern conti- 
nent reaching down in a peninsula from the corner of China 
(see maps, pp. 18-19), ^^^ ^ continent set in its own he??iisphere, 
and separated on the west from the old world of Cathay by a 
far greater expanse of water than on the east from the old world 
of Europe. It still required generations of explorers to develop 
the true size and shape of the western continent ; but Magellan's 
wonderful voyage had located the continent at last in its relation 
to the known countries of the world. 

While Magellan's starving sailors were battling their way 20. cortez'i 
across the Pacific, stirring scenes were being enacted in Mexico. JJexico^^ ° 
The Spaniards, starting from Hayti as a base, had conquered 1519-1521 
and colonized Porto Rico and Cuba (1508), and sent expedi- 
tions west to the Isthmus of Panama (Balboa, 15 13), and north 
to Florida (Ponce de Leon, 15 13). In 15 19 Hernando Cortez, 
a Spanish adventurer of great courage and sagacity, was sent 
by the governor of Cuba to conquer and plunder the rich Indian 
kingdom which explorers had found to the north of the isthmus. 
This was the Aztec confederacy of Indian tribes under an 
" emperor," Montezuma. The land was rich in silver and gold ; 



1 6 The Establishment of the English 

the people were skilled in art and architecture. They had an 
elaborate religion with splendid temples, but practiced the cruel 
rite of human sacrifices. Their capital city of Mexico was situ- 
ated on an island in the middle of a lake, and approached by 
four causeways from the four cardinal points of the compass. 
One of their religious legends told of a fair-haired god of the sky 
(Quetzacoatl), who had been driven out to sea, but who would 
return again to rule over them in peace and plenty. When the 
natives saw the Spaniard with his " white-winged towers " mov- 
ing on the sea, they thought that the " fair god " had returned. 
Cortez was not slow to follow up this advantage. His belching 
cannon and armored knights increased the superstitious awe 
of the natives. By a rare combination of courage and intrigue, 
Cortez seized their ruler, Montezuma, captured their capital, and 
made their ancient and opulent realm a dependency of Spain 
(152 1). It was the first sure footing of the Spaniards on the 
American continent, and served as an important base for further 
exploration and conquest. 
21. Spanish The twenty years following Cortez's conquest of Mexico 
fn^America "i^rk the height of Spanish exploration in America. From 
1520-1550 Kansas to Chile, and from the Carolinas to the Pacific, the flag 
and speech of Spain were carried. No feature of excitement 
and romance is absent from the vivid accounts which the heroes 
of these expeditions have left us. Now it is a survivor of ship- 
wreck in the Mexican Gulf, making his way from tribe to tribe 
across the vast stretches of Texas and Mexico to the Gulf of 
California (Cabeza de Vaca, 1 528-1 536) ; now it is the ruffian 
captain Pizarro, repeating south of the isthmus the conquest 
of Cortez, and adding the untold wealth of the silver mines of 
Peru to the Spanish treasury (i 531-1533) ; now it is the noble 
governor De Soto, with his train of six hundred knights in 
"doublets and cassocks of silk" and his priests in splendid 
vestments, with his Portuguese in shining armor, his horses, 
hounds, and hogs, all ready for a triumphal procession to king- 
doms of gold and ivory — but doomed to toil, with his famished 



The Nezv World 1/ 

and ambushed host, through tangle and swamp from Georgia 
to Arkansas, and finally to leave his fever-stricken body at the 
bottom of the Mississippi, beneath the waters " alwaies muddie, 
down which there came continually manie trees and timber" 
(i 539-1 542); now it is Coronado and his three hundred fol- 
lowers, intent on finding the seven fabled cities of Cibola, and 
chasing the golden mirage of the western desert from the Pacific 
coast of Mexico to the present state of Kansas (15 40-1 5 42). 
For all this vast expenditure of blood and treasure, not a Spanish 
settlement existed north of the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of 
the sixteenth century. The Spaniards were gold seekers, not 
colonizers. They had found a few savages living in cane houses 
and mud pueblos, but the fountain of perpetual youth and the 
cities of gold they had not found. They could not, of course, 
foresee the wealth which one day would be derived from the 
rich lands through which they had so painfully struggled ; and 
the survivors returned to the Mexican towns discouraged and 
disillusioned. 

South and west of the Gulf of Mexico, however, and in the 22. The 
islands of the West Indies the Spaniards had built up a huge gmpke in 
empire. The discovery of gold in Hayti, and the conquest of the America 
rich treasures of Mexico and Peru, brought thousands of ad- 
venturers and tens of thousands of negro slaves to tropical 
America. Spain governed the American lands despotically. 
Commerce and justice were exclusively regulated through the 
" India House " at Seville. The Spanish culture was intro- 
duced. In the year 1536 a printing press was set up,^ and 
shortly after the middle of the century universities were opened 
in Mexico and Peru. The essential features of the Spanish gov- 
ernment also were brought across the ocean, — its absolutism 
in government and in religion. Trade was restricted to certain 
ports ; heretics and their descendants to the third generation 

1 It is interesting to note that more than a century later Governor Berkeley of 
the English colony of Virginia " thanked God that the colony had no printing 
press or schools, and hoped that it would have none for a hundred years." 



i8 



The Establishment of the English 




The Lenox Globe (1510) showing the New World as an Island 
off the Coast of Asia 




Finseus' Map {1531) showing the New World (America) as a Peninsula 
attached to Asia 



The New World 



19 










r>-^_ -- o 






1 ' 



v::^ 










Miinster's Map (1540) showing Land North of the Isthmus attached 
to the New World 



'^'^'^/lAX^^'^S. CORTERE 




Mercator's Map (1541) showing the Name "America" for the 
First Time applied to the Whole Continent 



20 



The Establiskmeftt of the English 



23. Bartolo- 
meo las Casas 



24. French 
explorers 
in North 
America ; 
Verrazano 
and Cartier 



were excluded from the colonies ; the natives were almost exter- 
minated by the rigors of the slave driver in the mines. The land 
was the property of the sovereign, and by him was granted to 
nobles, who, under the guise of protecting and converting the 
natives, made their fiefs great slave estates, and treated both 
Indians and negroes with frightful cruelty. 

On the dark background of the Spanish- American slave sys- 
tem one figure stands out in dazzling moral brightness, — the 
saintly bishop. Las Casas, who in an age when slavery was gen- 
erally practiced by the most enlightened nations of the world, 
devoted his life to the emancipation of the negro and Indian 
slaves in Spanish America. Las Casas came out to the Indies 
in 1502. He was himself a slave owner, until, converted by the 
sermon of a Dominican friar, he freed his own slaves and en- 
tered on his long crusade for emancipation. Contending against 
hatred, jealousy, and court intrigue, he persuaded the emperor 
Charles V to put an emancipation clause in the " New Laws " 
for the Indies (1542), and brought the document to America 
to enforce in person. In one of the worst regions of Central 
America, called the " land of war," he demonstrated the pos- 
sibility of human brotherhood by establishing a free colony and 
winning the love and devotion of the natives. His " History 
of the Indies " is one of the most valuable accounts of Spanish 
America in the earliest years. 

The Spaniards were the chief, but not the only, explorers in 
America in the sixteenth century. In 1524 the king of France, 
scorning the papal bull of 1493, and jocosely asking to see old 
Adam's will bequeathing the world to Spain and Portugal, sent 
his Italian navigator, Verrazano, to seek the Indies by the west- 
ern route. Verrazano sailed and charted the coast of North 
America from Labrador to the Carolinas, but did not find a 
route to Asia. Ten years later Jacques Cartier sailed up the 
St. Lawrence River to the Indian village on the site of Mont- 
real. There his way to China was blocked by the rapids which 
were later named Lachi?ie ('' China " rapids). But wars, foreign 



The New World 21 

and civil, absorbed the strength of France during the last half 
of the sixteenth century, and, with one trifling exception, projects 
of colonization slept until the return of peace and the accession 
to the throne of the glorious King Henry of Navarre (1589). 

War, which was the death of French enterprise, was the very 25. TheEng- 
life of English colonial activity, which had languished since In Eui-°^^" 
John Cabot's day. England and Spain became bitter rivals — beth's reign, 

y o r 1558-1603 

religious, commercial, political — during Elizabeth's reign (1558- 
1603). England was fighting for her very life and the life of 
the Protestant cause against the aggressive Catholic monarch 
Philip II. She had no army to attack Philip in his Spanish penin- 
sula, but she sent troops to aid the revolting Netherlands, and 
struck at the very roots of Philip's power by attacking his 
treasure-laden fleets from the Indies. England's dauntless sea- 
men, Hawkins, Davis, Cavendish, and above all Sir Francis 
Drake, performed marvels of daring against the Spaniards, 
scouring the coasts of America and the high seas for their 
treasure ships, fighting single-handed against whole fleets, cir- 
cumnavigating the globe with their booty, and even sailing into 
the harbors of Spain to " singe King Philip's beard " by burn- 
ing his ships and docks. 

From capturing the Spanish gold on the seas to contending 26. Attempts 
with Spain for the possession of the golden land was but a Raie\ghto^" 
step ; and we find the veteran soldier, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, -^^a^^^^^^®^ 
receiving in 1578 a patent from Queen Elizabeth to " inhabit and 1578-1591 
possess all remote and heathen lands not in the actual possession 
of any Christian prince." Gilbert was unsuccessful in founding a 
colony on the bleak coast of Newfoundland, and his little ship 
foundered on her return voyage. His patent was handed on to 
his half-brother. Sir Walter Raleigh, Elizabeth's favorite courtier. 
Raleigh's ships sought milder latitudes, and a colony was landed 
on Roanoke Island, off the coast of North Carolina (1585). The 
land, at Elizabeth's own suggestion, was named "Virginia," in 
honor of the " Virgin Queen." The colonists sought diligently for 
gold and explored the coasts and rivers for a passage to Cathay. 



22 The Establishment of the English 

But misfortune overtook them, supplies failed to come from 
England on time, and the colony was abandoned. Again and 
again Raleigh tried to found an enduring settlement (1585, 
1586, 1587, 1589), but the struggle with Spain absorbed the 
attention of the nation, and the planters preferred gold hunting 
to agriculture. Raleigh sank a private fortune equivalent to a 
million dollars in his enterprise, and finally abandoned it with 
the optimistic prophecy to Lord Cecil: ^' I shall yet live to see 
it an Inglishe nation." He did live to see the beginnings of an 
" Inglishe nation " in Virginia, but it was from his prison, where 
he lay under sentence of death, treacherously procured by the 
envy of the Stuart king who followed the " spacious times of 
great Elizabeth." 

27. The The opening of the seventeenth century found America, north 
can Indians " c>f the Gulf of Mexico (except for one or two feeble Spanish 

settlements), still the undisputed possession of the native Indian 
tribes. Wherever the European visitors had struck the western 
continent, whether on. the shores of Labrador or the tropical 
islands of the Caribbean Sea, on the wide plains of the south- 
west or the slopes of the Andes, they had found a scantily clad, 
copper-colored race of men with high cheek bones and straight 
black hair. Columbus, thinking he had reached the Indies, 
called the curious, friendly inhabitants who came running down 
to his ships, Indians^ and that inappropriate name has been used 
ever since to designate the natives of the western hemisphere. 

28. civiiiza- None of the North American Indians had reached the stage 
Indians of ^^ civilization characterized by an alphabet and literature, al- 
^uthAmwica ^^^^S^ ^ ^^^ some Rocky Mountain and Pacific coast tribes 

had passed beyond the stage of the savage hunter, housed in 
his flimsy tepee or skin tent, and living on the quarry of 
his bow and arrow. In Mexico, Central America, and South 
America the Spanish explorers and conquerors found a higher 
native development in art, industry, mythology, architecture, 
and agriculture than was later found among the Indians of the 
north. Even the germ of an organized state existed in the Aztec 



of Mexico 



The New World 23 

confederacy of Mexico. Huge pueblos, or communal houses, 
made of adobe (clay), were built around a square or semicircular 
court in rising tiers reached by ladders. A single pueblo some- 
times housed a thousand persons. The Aztec and Inca chiefs 
in Mexico and Peru lived in elaborately decorated " palaces." 
Still the natives of these regions v^^ere by no means so highly 
civilized a race as the exaggerated accounts of the Spanish con- 
querors often imply. They had not invented such simple con- 
trivances as stairs, chimneys, and wheeled vehicles. They could 
neither forge iron nor build arched bridges. Their intellectual 
range is shown by the knotted strings which they used for 
mathematical calculations, and their moral degradation appears 
in the shocking human sacrifices of their barbarous religion. 

The Indian tribes north of the Gulf of Mexico had generally 29. The 
reached the stage of development called " lower barbarism," a of the Gulf 
stage of pottery making and rude agricultural science. Midway 
between the poor tepee of the Pacific coast savage and the im- 
posing pueblo of Mexico was the ordinary " long house " or 
" round house " of the village Indians from Canada to Florida. 
The house was built of stout saplings, covered with bark or a 
rough mud plaster. Along a central aisle, or radiating from a 
central hearth, were ranged the separate family compartments, 
divided by thin walls. Forty or fifty families usually lived in 
the house, sharing their food of corn, beans, pumpkins, wild 
turkey, fish, bear, and buffalo meat in common. Only their 
clothing, ornaments, and weapons were personal property. The 
women of the tribe prepared the food, tended the children, 
made the utensils and ornaments of beads, feathers, and skins, 
and strung the polished shells or " wampum " which the Indian 
used for money and for correspondence. The men were occupied 
with war, the hunt, and the council. In their leisure they repaired 
their bows, sharpened new arrowheads, or stretched the smooth 
bark of the birch tree over their canoe frames. They had a great 
variety of games and dances, solemn and gay ; and they loved to 
bask idly in the sun, too, like the Mississippi negro of to-day. 



Wi^ I 




==^ rt 



24 



The New World 2$ 

In character the Indian showed the most astonishing extremes, 
now immovable as a rock, now capricious as the April breeze. 
Around the council fire he was taciturn, dignified, thoughtful, 
but in the dance he broke into unrestrained and uncontrollable 
ecstasies. He bore with stoical fortitude the most horrible tor- 
tures at the stake, but howled in his wigwam over an injured fin- 
ger. His powers of smell, sight, and hearing were incredibly keen 
on the hunt or the warpath, but at the same time he showed a 
stolid stupidity that no white man could match. The Indian seems 
to have been generally friendly to the European on their first 
meeting, and it was chiefly the fault of the white man's cruelty 
and treachery that the friendly curiosity of the red man was 
turned so often into malignant hatred instead of firm alliance. 

There were probably never more than a few hundred thou- 30. The 
sand Indians in America. Their small number perhaps accounts Indians 
for their lack of civilization. At any rate their development 
reached its highest point in the thickly settled funnel-shaped 
region south of the Mexican boundary, where it has been sug- 
gested that they were crowded by the advance of a glacial ice 
sheet from the north. There are about 225,000 Indians living 
within the boundaries of the United States. Many tribes have 
died out ; others have been almost completely exterminated or as- 
similated by the whites. The surviving Indians, on their western 
reservations or in the government schools, are rapidly learning 
the ways of the white men. It is to be hoped that their education 
will be wisely fostered, and that instead of the billion dollars spent 
on the forty Indian wars of the nineteenth century, a few hundred 
thousand dollars spent in the twentieth century on Indian schools 
like Hampton and Carlisle will forever divest the word " Indian " 
of its associations with the tomahawk, torture, and treachery.-^ 

1 The Indians, though always a subject of much curiosity, have only recently 
been studied scientifically. Our government, yielding to the entreaties of scholars 
who realized how fast the manners and customs of the natives were disappearing, 
established in 1879 ^ Bureau of Ethnology, for the careful study of the surviving 
vestiges of Indian life. To the reports of this bureau and to the researches of 
scholars and explorers connected with our various museums we are indebted for 
a great deal of valuable and fascinating information about the Indians. 



26 The Establishment of the English 

REFERENCES 

The Discovery of America : John Fiske, The Discovery of America, 
Vol. I ; E. P. Cheyney, The European Background of American History 
(The American Nation Series), chaps, i-v; E. G. Bourne, Spain in 
America (Am. Nation), chaps, i-vii; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. I, 
chap, i ; Olson and Bourne, The Northmen, Columbus, and Cabot 
(Original Narratives of Early American History); Justin Winsor, 
Narrative and ditical History of America, Vol. I, chap, i ; Vol. II, 
chaps, i-ii. 

A Century of Exploration: Fiske, Vol. II; Bourne, chaps, viii-xv; 
Cambridge Modej-n History, chap, ii ; WiNSOR, Vol. II, chaps, iv, vi, vii, 
ix ; Vol. Ill, chaps, i-iii ; HoDGE and Lewis, Spanish Explorers in the 
Southern United States (Orig. Narr.) ; H. S. BuRRAGE, Early English 
and French Voyagers (Orig. Narr.) ; A. B. Hart, American History told 
by Contemporaries, Vol. I, Nos. 21-35; Edw. Channing, History of 
the Utiited States, Vol. I, chaps, iii-v ; L. Farrand, Basis of American 
History (Am. Nation), chaps, v-xvii. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. Geographical Knowledge before Columbus : Winsor, Vol. I, pp. 1-33; 
FisKE, Vol. I, pp. 256-294; Cheyney, pp. 41-78. 

2. Columbus's First Voyage : Olson and Bourne (Orig. Narr.), 
pp. 89-258 (Columbus's journal); Fiske, Vol. I, pp. 419-446; Old 
South Leaflets, Nos. 29 and 33 (descriptions of voyage by Columbus and 
by his son). 

3. De Soto's Journey to the Mississippi : Hodge and Lewis (Orig. 
Narr.), pp. 129-272 ; Bourne, pp. 162-170 ; Winsor, Vol. II, pp. 244-254: 

4. Raleigh's Attempts to found a Colony in Virginia : Bur rage (Orig. 
Narr.), pp. 225-323; Hart, No. 32; Winsor, Vol. Ill, pp. 105-116; 
Old South Leaflets, Nos. 92, 119. 

5. The American Indians : Fiske, Vol. I, pp. 38-147 ; Farrand, 
pp. 195-271 ; Hart, Nos. 21, 60, 64, 91. 




CHAPTER II 

THE ENGLISH COLONIES 

The Old Dominion 

Queen Elizabeth's long and glorious reign came to an end 31. Expiora- 
in 1603, when she was succeeded on the throne of England by seventeenth 
James Stuart of Scotland,^ son of her ill-fated cousin and rival, century 
Mary Queen of Scots. With the Age of Elizabeth there passed 
also the age of romance and chivalry. The gorgeous dreams of 
treasure and empire which filled the minds of the explorers of 
the sixteenth century faded into the sober realization of the 
hardships involved in settling the wild and distant regions of the 
New World. True, the search for gold and for the northwest 
passage to the Indies, the plans for the wholesale conversion 
of the Indians, and the erection of splendid kingdoms in the 
heart of America still lingered on into the seventeenth cen- 
tury and died slowly. But these ideas lingered only ; they were 
not, as earlier, the spring and motive of the expeditions to 
America. To them succeeded the study of the soil and prod- 
ucts of the New World, the charting of its coasts and rivers, 
the defense of the infant settlements against the Indians, the 
transportation from Europe of tools and animals, the patient 
waiting for the slow returns of agricultural investment, — in a 
word, all that goes to make a permanent, self-sufficing com- 
munity, a home. 

1 Since all the English colonies along the Atlantic seaboard, with the excep- 
tion of Georgia, were settled under the Stuart kings, whose names will occur 
constantly in the pages of this chapter, it will be convenient for the student 
to review the main facts of the rule of the Stuart dynasty in Cheyney's Short 
History of England, chaps, xiv-xvi, or more briefly in Robinson's History of 
Western Europe, chap, xxx, 

27 



28 



The EstablisJwient of the Efiglish 



32. King 
James I 
charters the 
London and 
Plymouth 
companies, 
1606 



King James I 
in the year 1606 
gave permis- 
sion to ''certain 
loving subjects 
to deduce and 
conduct two sev- 
eral colonies or 
plantations of 
settlers to Amer- 
ica." The Stuart 
king had begun 
his reign with a 
pompous an- 
nouncement of 
peace with all his 
European neigh- 
bors; conse- 
quently, though 
England claimed 
all North Amer- 
ica by virtue of 
Cabot's discov- 
ery of 1497' 
James limited 
the territory of 
his grant so as 
not to encroach 
either on the 
Spanish settle- 
ments of Florida 
or the French 
interests about 
the St. Lawrence. 
One group of 




extend 100 mifes inland. 
Charter of 1609 to London Co. "Land 200~mncs noith and south 
of Toint Comfort, lying from the seacoast up into the land from, 
sea to sea, west and northwest." 

\ \ o 

85° 80 



The Virginia Grants of 1606 and 1609 



The Ejiglish Colonies 29 

"loving subjects," called the London Company, was to have 
exclusive right to settle between 34° and 38° of north latitude 
(see map) ; the other group, the Plymouth Company, was granted 
the equally broad region between 41° and 45°. The neutral 
belt from 2)^'' to 41° was left open to both companies, with 
the proviso that neither should make any settlement within one 
hundred miles of the other. The grants extended one hundred 
miles inland. The powers of government bestowed on the new 
companies were as complicated as the grants of territory. Each 
company was to have a council of thirteen in England, ap- 
pointed by the king and subject to his control. This English 
council was to appoint another council of thirteen to reside in 
the colony, and, under the direction of a president, to manage 
its local affairs, subject always to the English council, which in 
turn was subject to the king. 

In May, 1607, about a hundred colonists, sent out by the 33. The 
London Company, reached the shores of Virginia, and sailing at james- 
some miles up a broad river, started a settlement on a low pen- ''^°^"' ^^°7 
insula. River and settlement they named James and Jamestown 
in honor of the king. The colony did not thrive. By royal order 
the crops for five years were to be gathered into a common 
storehouse, and thence dispensed to the settlers, thus encour- 
aging the idle and shiftless to live at the expense of the in- 
dustrious. Authority was hard to enforce with the clumsy form 
of government, and the proprietors in England were too far 
away to consult the needs of the colonists. Exploring the land 
for gold and the rivers for a passage to Cathay proved more 
attractive to the settlers than planting corn. The unwholesome 
site of the town caused fever and malaria. 

Had it not been for the almost superhuman efforts of one 34. John 
man, John Smith, the little colony could not have survived. tS^«sUrving 
Smith had come to Virginia after a romantic and world-wide time" 
career as a soldier of fortune. His masterful spirit at once as- 
sumed the direction of the colony in spite of president and 
council. His courage and tact with the Indians got corn for the 




C^P^efe arc the Lines ihatflicw ikyToCCyiutthofz 

nhat/hew thy GtoCC and QIoPV, hri^hur hec : 

Crhy TaiPC'J>ifcouerics cud ^PWlC" Ovcrthrowes 

Of Sdva^CS^mach. OivitUzi fy ^^^-A^ — 

'Bejhjhew tAy SpifU,'and iff it Otory (Wyf 

So^ikni artBry?C wttkout^httt QrOtocv/i^itL 



30 



The English Colonies 31 

starving settlers, and his indomitable energy inspired the good 
and cowed the lazy and the unjust. In his vivid narratives of 
early Virginia, the '' Trewe Relaycion" (1608) and the '' Generall 
Historic" (1624), he has done himself and his services to the 
colony full credit, for he was not a modest or retiring man. 
But his self-praise does not lessen the value of his services. In 
the summer of 1609 he was wounded by an explosion of gun- 
powder, and returned to England. The winter following his 
departure was the awful " starving time." Of five hundred men 
in the colony in October, but sixty were left in June. This feeble 
remnant, taking advantage of the arrival of ships from the Ber- 
mudas, determined to abandon the settlement. With but a 
fortnight's provisions, which they hoped would carry them to 
Newfoundland, bidding final farewell to the scene of their suf- 
fering, they dropped slowly down the broad James. But on 
reaching the mouth of the river they espied ships flying Eng- 
land's colors. It was the fleet of Lord de la Warre (Delaware), 
the new governor, bringing men and supplies. Thus narrowly did 
the Jamestown colony escape the fate of Raleigh's settlements. 

De la Warre brought more than food and recruits. The Lon- 35. The new 
don Company had been reorganized in 1609, and a new charter ^^^^^^^ 
granted by the king, which altered both the territory and the gov- 
ernment of Virginia (see map, p. 28). Henceforth, as a large 
and rich corporation in England, the company was to conduct its 
affairs without the intervention of the king. Virginia was to have 
a governor sent out by the company. Under the new regime 
the colony picked up. Order was enforced under the harsh but 
salutary rule of Governor Dale (161 i-i 6 1 6). The colonists, losing 
the gold fever, turned to agriculture and manufacture. Tobacco 
became the staple product of the colony, and experiments were 
made in producing soap, glass, silk, and wine. A better class of 
emigrants came over, and in 16 19 a shipload of ''respectable 
maidens " arrived, who were auctioned off to the bachelor 
planters for so many pounds of tobacco apiece. At the same 
time the sharing of harvests in common was abandoned, and 



32 The Establishment of the English 

the settlers were given their lands in full ownership. In the 
words of one of the Virginia clergy of the period, " This plan- 
tation which the Divell hath so often troden downe is revived 
and daily groweth to more and hopeful successe." 

36. The no- The year 1619, which brought the Virginians wives and 
1619. Negro lands, is memorable also for two events of great significance for 
slavery amd ^^ X-sX^c history of the colonies and the nation. In that year the 
government first cargo of negro slaves was brought to the colony, and the 

first. representative assembly convened on American soil. On 
July 30 two burgesses (citizens) from each plantation " met with 
the governor and his six councilors in the little church at James- 
town. This tiny legislature of twenty-seven members, after 
enacting various laws for the colony, adjourned on August 4, 
" by reason of extreme heat both past and likely to ensue." 
Spanish, French, and Dutch settlements existed in America 
at the time of this first Virginia assembly of burgesses, but 
none of them either then had or copied later the system of 
representative government. Democracy was England's gift to 
the New World. 

37. King The man to whom Virginia owed this great boon of self- 

^^^ly^^^ government, and whose name should be known and honored 

charter of the y^y every American, was Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the 

London Com- ^ ^ ' ^ ' 

pany, 1624 London Company. Sandys belonged to the country party in 

Parliament, who were making James I's life miserable by their 
resistance to' his arbitrary government based on " divine right," 
or responsibility to God alone for his royal acts. Gondomar, 
the Spanish minister in London, whispered in James's ear that 
the meetings of the Company were " hotbeds of sedition." 
But James had let the London Company get out of his hands 
by the new charter, and when he tried to interfere in their elec- 
tion of a treasurer, they rebuked him by choosing one of the 
most prominent of the country party (the Earl of Southampton, 
a friend of Shakespeare's). Not being able to dictate to the 
company, James resolved to destroy it. In a moment of great 
depression for the colony, just after a horrible Indian massacre 



The English Colonies 33 

(1622) and a famine, James commenced suit against the com- 
pany, which a subservient court declared had overstepped its 
legal rights and forfeited its charter. James then took the colony 
into his own hands and sent over men to govern it who were 
responsible only to his Privy Council. Virginia thus became a 
"royal province" (1624), and remained so for one hundred 
fifty years, until the American Revolution. 

James intended to suppress the Virginia assembly (the 38. Virginia 
House of Burgesses) too, and rule the colony by a committee province, 
of his courtiers. But he died before he had a chance to extin- ^^24-1775 
guish the liberties of Virginia, and his son, Charles I, hoping to 
get the monopoly of the tobacco trade in return for the favor, 
allowed the House of Burgesses- to continue. So Virginia fur- 
nished the pattern which sooner or later nearly all the Ameri- 
can colonies reproduced, namely, that of a governor (with a 
small council) appointed by the English king, and a legislature, 
or assembly, elected by the people of the colony. 

The people of Virginia were very loyal to the Stuarts. When 39. Virginia 
, , , . -, -r^ 1. . T^ , T 11 named "The 

the quarrel between kmg and Parliament m England reached oid Domin- 



ion' 



the stage of civil war (1642), and Charles I was driven from 
his throne and beheaded (1649), many of his supporters in Eng- 
land, who were called Cavaliers, emigrated to Virginia, giving 
the colony a decidedly aristocratic character. And when Charles 
II was restored to his father's throne in 1660, the Virginian bur- 
gesses recognized his authority so promptly and enthusiastically 
that he called them " the best of his distant children." He even 
elevated Virginia to the proud position of a "dominion," by quar- 
tering its arms (the old seal of the Virginia Company) on his 
royal shield with the arms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. 
The burgesses were very proud of this distinction, and remem- 
bering that they were the oldest as well as the most faithful of 
the Stuart settiements in America, adopted the name of " The 
Old Dominion." 

Though there were actually many occasions of dispute between 40. Bacon' 
the governors sent over by the king and the legislature elected 15^6 



34 



The Establishment of the Eyiglish 



41. The sig- 
nificance of 
Bacon's 
Rebellion 



by the people, only one incident of prime importance occurred 
to disturb the peaceful history of the Old Dominion under its 
royal masters. In 1675 the Susquehannock Indians were harass- 
ing the upper settlements of the colony, and Governor Berke- 
ley, who was profiting largely by his private interest in the fur 
trade, refused to send a force of militia to punish them. He was 
supported by an " old and rotten " House of Burgesses, which 
he had kept in office, doing his bidding, for fourteen years. A 
young and popular planter named Nathaniel Bacon, who had 

seen one of his overseers 
murdered by the Indians, 
put himself at the head of 
three hundred volunteers 
and demanded an officer's 
commission of Governor 
Berkeley. Berkeley re- 
fused, and Bacon marched 
against the Indians with- 
out any commission, utterly 
routing them and saving 
the colony from tomahawk 
and firebrand. The gov- 
ernor proclaimed Bacon a 
rebel and set a price upon 
his head. In the distress- 
ing civil war which followed, the governor was driven from 
his capital and Jamestown was burned by the "rebels." But 
Bacon died of fever (or poison ?) at the moment of his victory, 
and his party, being made up only of his personal following, fell 
to pieces. Berkeley returned and took grim vengeance on Ba- 
con's supporters until the burgesses petitioned him to " spill no 
more blood." 

Bacon's Rebellion, despite its deplorable features, did a good 
work. It showed that the colonists dared to act for themselves. 
It forced the dissolution of the " old and rotten " assembly and 




In Celebration of the Three-Hundredth 

Anniversary of the Settlement of 

Jamestown 



The English Colonies 35 

the choice of a new one representing the will of the people. It 
led to the recall of Berkeley by Charles II, who explained indig- 
nantly when he heard of the governor's cruel reprisals: "That 
old fool has taken away more lives in that naked country than 
I did here for the murder of my father." And, finally, it showed 
that the people of the Old Dominion, though loyal to their king, 
had no intention of submitting to an arbitrary governor in col- 
lusion with a corrupt assembly. 

The New England Settlements 

While these things were going on in Virginia a very different 42. Activ- 
history was being enacted in the northern regions granted to the perdinando 
Plymouth Company. This company sent out a colony in the very ^^'^ses 
year that the London Company settled Jamestown (1607), but 
one winter in the little fort at the mouth of the Kennebec River, 
on the icebound coast of Maine, was enough to send the frozen 
settlers back to England. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of 
Plymouth, was the moving spirit of the company, and despite 
his losses in the expedition of 1607-1608, he showed a deter- 
mination worthy of a Sir Walter Raleigh. In 161 4 he sent 
John Smith, long since cured of the wound caused by the ex- 
plosion of gunpowder, to explore the coast of " northern Vir- 
ginia," as the Plymouth grant was called. Smith made a map 
of the coast from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, called the land " New 
England," and first set down on the map of America such famil- 
iar names as Cambridge, the Charles River, Plymouth, and Cape 
Ann. In 1620 Gorges persuaded the king to make a new grant 
of this territory to a number of nobles and gentlemen about the 
court, who were designated as the Council for New England. 

A few weeks after the formation of this new company there 43. The 
landed at Plymouth, from the little vessel Mayflower set anchor (separatists) 

off Cape Cod, a group of one hundred men and women, known landat Piym- 
^ ' ° ^ ' outh, Decem- 

to later history as the " Pilgrims." They were not sent by the berzi, 1620 

Council for New England nor by the London Company. Their 



36 



The Establishment of the English 



object was neither to explore the country for gold nor to find 
a northwest passage to the Indies. They came of their own free 
will to found homes in the wilderness, where, unmolested, they 
might worship God according to their conscience. They were 
Independe7its or Separatists^ people who had separated from the 
Church of England because it retained in its worship many fea- 
tures, such as vestments, altars, and ceremonies, which seemed 
to them as ''idolatrous" as the Roman Catholic rites, which 
England had rejected. Three centuries ago religion was an 
affair of the state, not alone of private choice. Rulers enforced 

uniformity in creed and 
worship, in the belief that 
it was necessary to the 
preservation of their au- 
thority. If a subject could 
differ from the king in 
religious opinion, it was 
feared that it would not 
be long before he would 
presume to differ in po- 
litical opinion, and then 
what would become of 
obedience and loyalty ! For men who were too brave to conceal 
their convictions, and too honest to modify them at the command 
of the sovereign, only three courses were open, ■ — to submit to 
persecution and martyrdom, to rise in armed resistance, or to re- 
tire to a place beyond the reach of the king's arm. The history 
of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries is full of 
the story of cruel persecutions, civil wars, and exiles for con- 
science' sake. James I began his reign by declaring that he 
would make his subjects conform in religion or " hariy them 
out of the land." He '' harried " the Separatist congregations of 
some little villages in the east of England, until in 1608 they 
took refuge in Holland — the only country in Europe where 
complete religious toleration existed. Not content to be absorbed 




The Mayfloiver in Plymouth Harbor 




MONUMENT AT PROVINCETOWN, MASS., TO COMMEMORATE 
THE LANDING OF THE FIRST PARTY FROM THE MAYFLOWER 

Dedicated by President Taft, August 8, 1910 



The E^iglish Colonies 



37 



into the Dutch nation an4 have their children forget the cus- 
toms and speech of England, the Separatists determined to 
migrate to the new land of America. They got permission 
from the London Company to settle in Virginia ; but their pilot 
brought them to the shores of Cape Cod, where they landed 
December 21, 1620, although they had neither a right to the 
soil (a patent) nor power to establish a government (a charter). 

Before landing, 44. The 
the Pilgrims gath- compact" 

ered in the cabin of ^°.^ ^^\^^- 
gnm colony 

the Mayflower' and at Plymouth 

1620— I69I 

pledged themselves 
to form a govern- 
ment and obey it. 
That was the first 
instance of complete 
self-government in 
our history, for the 
assembly which 
met at Jamestown 
the year before the 
Pilgrims landed, was 
called together by 
orders from the Vir- 
ginia Company in 
England. The win- 
ter of 1620-162 1 on the " stern and rock-bound coast " of New 
England went hard with the Pilgrims. '' It pleased God," wrote 
Bradford, their governor for many years and their historian, 
'^ to vissite us with death dayly, and with so generall a disease 
that the living were scarce able to burie the dead." Yet when 
the Mayflower returned to England in the spring not one of 
the colonists went with her. Their home was in America. 
They had come to conquer the wilderness or die, and their de- 
termination was expressed in the brave words of one of their 




The Pilgrim Tablet in Leyden, Holland 



/^e.A>?e- " . ^~. -^ — ' * 






By Courtesy of The Burrows Brothers Company, from Avery's " History of the United States ' 

Facsimile of Bradford MS. " History of Plimoth Plantation " 
38 



The English Colonies 39 

leaders : '* It is not with us as with men whom small things 
can discourage." The little colony grew slowly. It was never 
granted a charter by the king, and consequently its government, 
which was carried on by the democratic institution of the town 
meeting, was never legal in the eyes of the English court. Yet, 
because of its small size and quiet demeanor, the colony of 
Plymouth was allowed to continue undisturbed by the Stuarts. 
It took its part bravely in the defense of the New England 
settlements against the Indians, and saw half its towns de- 
stroyed in the terrible war set on foot by the Narragansett chief 
"King Philip," in 1675.^ Finally, in 1691, it was annexed to 
the powerful neighboring colony of Massachusetts Bay. Politi- 
cally the little colony of Plymouth, the '' old colony," was of 
slight importance, but its moral and religious influence on 
New England was great. The Pilgrims demonstrated that in- 
dustry and courage could conquer even the inhospitable soil 
and climate of the Massachusetts shore, and that unflinching 
devotion to an ideal could make of the wilderness a home. 

While the settlement at Plymouth was slowly growing, sev- 45. charies i 
eral attempts were made by Gorges and other members of the Massachu- 
Council for New England to plant colonies in the New World. ^^^^^ 
About half a hundred scattered settlers were established around March, 1629 
the shores and on^the islands of Boston harbor, when in 1628 
a company of Puritan gentlemen secured a grant of land from 
the council and began the largest and most important of the 
English settlements in America, — the colony of Massachusetts 
Bay. The next year they obtained from Charles I a royal 
charter constituting them a political body niled by a governor, a 

1 King Philip's War was only the fiercest of many Indian attacks on the 
westward-moving frontier of the English settlements in the seventeenth century. 
We have already noticed the attack of the Susquehannocks on the Virginian 
frontier in 1675- 1676 (P- 34)- K.i"S Philip's War, of the same years, in New 
England was crushed by a combination of troops from the Massachusetts, the 
Connecticut, and the Plymouth colonies, but not until half of the eighty or ninety 
towns of those colonies had been ravaged by fire, some hundred thousand pounds 
sterling of their treasure spent, and one out of every ten of their fighting men 
killed or captured. 



40 



The Establishnient of the English 



deputy governor, and eighteen " assistants," all elected by the 
members of the company ; and in 1630 they sent over to Mas- 
sachusetts seventeen ships with nearly a thousand colonists. 
John Endicott had established the first settlers of the company 
at Salem in 1628, but when the main body of emigrants came 
over with John Winthrop two years later, the colony was trans- 
ferred to a narrow neck of land a few miles to the south, known 




St. Botolph's Church, Boston, England, where John Cotton preached 
and Roger WilHams's Church in Salem, Massachusetts 

to the Indians as Shawmut, The spot was rechristened Boston, 
after the Puritan fishing village in the east of England, where 
John Cotton was pastor. Winthrop and Cotton were the lead- 
ing spirits of the colony in its first twenty years : the former, 
a cultivated gentleman from the south of England, serving almost 
continually as governor ; the latter, a scholar and preacher of 
great power, acting as director of the Massachusetts conscience. 
The Puritans, like the Separatists, protested against what 
they called " the idolatrous remnants of papacy " in the English 



The English Colonies 41 

Church ; but, unlike the Separatists, they believed in reforming 46. The per- 
the Church from within rather than leaving its communion, the^ihiritans 
They were for " purifying " its worship, not rejecting it ; or, in ^^ England 
the theological language of the day, they believed that '' the 
seamless garment of Christ (the Church) should be cleansed 
but not rent." However, King Charles I, coming more and more 
under the influence of men who thought the only ecclesiastical 
reform needed was the extermination of independent opinions 
of all sorts, and the lamblike submission of Church, courts, and 
parliaments to the royal will, made little distinction in his 
despotic mind between Separatists and Puritans. He was as 
glad to have the latter out of England as his father had been 
to get rid of the former, and he granted the Massachusetts 
charter less as a favor than as a sentence of exile. He little 
dreamed that he was laying the foundations of a practically 
independent state in his distant domain of America. 

For when in 1629 he angrily dismissed his Parliament and 47. The Mas- 
entered on his eleven years' course of despotism, several lead- company^ 
ing members of the Massachusetts Company decided to emigrate ^^^^ ^^J 
to America themselves and take their charter with them. The America, 1629 
king, absorbed in his quarrel with Parliament, probably knew 
nothing about the removal of the charter from England until, 
in 1634, the persecuting zeal of Archbishop Laud of Canterbury 
against the Puritans moved him to demand its surrender. The 
English representatives of the company politely informed the 
king that the charter was in America, and the colony in America 
(well out of reach of the king's officers) politely declined to 
send the charter back to England. Before the king could use 
force to recover the charter he was overtaken by a war with 
his Scottish subjects, and thus the Massachusetts Company 
escaped the fate which had overtaken the London Company's 
colony of Virginia ten years earlien 

The object of the Massachusetts settlers was to establish a 48. Massa- 
Puritan colony, and not to open a refuge for freedom of wor- jitan colony 
ship. To keep their community holy and undefiled, they refused 



42 The Establishment of the English 

to admit as ''freemen" (i.e. participants in the government) 
any but members of their own Church. Others might live in 
the colony so long as they did not resist the authorities, molest 
the ministers, or bring discredit on the Puritan system of wor- 
ship and government ; but they had to contribute to the support 
of the Church, and submit to its controlling oversight of both 
public and private life. During the decade 1 630-1 640 the grow- 
ing tyranny of King Charles and the persecutions of the zealous 
Archbishop Laud drove about twenty-five thousand refugees to 
the new colony. A large proportion of these emigrants were 
highly educated men of sterling moral quality. " God sifted a 
nation," wrote Governor Stoughton a half century later, " in 
order that he might send choice grain to this wilderness"; but 
Archbishop Laud, when he drove out of England the great 
Puritan clergymen who molded the thought of the new com- 
munity in America, had called them " swine which rooted out 
God's vineyard." 
49. Cense- The large emigration to Massachusetts brought about several 

the^rapld important political results. It relieved the colony of immediate 

growth of the fg^j. Qf attacks by the Indians.^ Then, again, it enabled the 
Puritan col- -^ ^ . . 

onyofMassa- authorities easily to drive out various companies of settlers 
chusctts 

established by the agents of Gorges and other claimants to the 

Massachusetts lands under the grants of the Council for New 

England, — especially the rollicking followers of one Morton, 

who, as the historian Bradford tells us, "did set up a schoole 

of athisme" at Merrymount (the site of Quincy, Massachusetts), 

where "his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves 

as if they had anew revived . . . the beastly practises of y^ 

madd Bacchanalians"; where they set up a maypole eighty feet 

high about which they frolicked with the Indians, and, worst of 

all, sold firearms to the redskins who "became madd after them 

1 It must be added that the danger to both the Plymouth and the Massachu- 
setts colonies in their early years from Indian attacks was much lessened by a 
terrible plague which had swept over eastern New England three years before 
the Pilgrims landed, and destroyed perhaps one half of the Indians from Maine 
to Rhode Island. 



The English Colonies 43 

and would not stick to give any prise for them . . . accounting 
their bowes and arrowes but babies [baubles] in comparison of 
them." Finally, the great size of the Massachusetts colony led 
to a representative form of government. The freemen increased 
so rapidly that they could not come together in a body to 
make their laws ; and after trying for a short time the experiment 
of leaving this power to the eighteen ^' assistants," the towns 
demanded the privilege of sending their own elected representa- 
tives to help the assistants make the laws (1633). Still only 
" freemen " (or members of the Puritan churches) could vote, 
and as the colony increased, an ever larger percentage of the 
inhabitants was disfranchised. The more liberal spirits of the 
colony protested against this narrowing of the suffrage, but the 
Puritan leaders were firm in their determination to keep out of 
the government all who were suspected of heresy in belief or 
laxity in morals. "A democracy" (i.e. the rule of all the people) 
'' is no fit government either for Church or for commonwealth," 
declared Cotton ; and even the tolerant John Winthrop defended 
the exclusive Puritan system in a letter to a protesting friend by 
the remark : " The best part Is always the least, and of that best 
part the wiser part is always the lesser." 

It was natural that this " Puritan aristocracy," which seemed 50. Reaction 
so harsh to many colonists, should lead to both voluntary and puritan arfs- 
enforced exile from the territory governed under the Massa- Jj^g^^^ ^^ 
chusetts -charter. Radiating southward and westward, the emi- chusetts 
grants from Massachusetts established the colonies of Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, and New Haven. 

Roger Williams, a gentle but uncompromising young man, 51. Roger 
came to the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1631, after taking founds Rhode 
his degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was forth- island, 1636 
with elected pastor of the church in Salem, and began to teach 
doctrines very unacceptable to the Puritan governors of the 
colony. He said that the land on which they had settled be- 
longed to the Indians, in spite of the king's charter, that the 
state had no control over a man's conscience, and that to make 



44 The Establishment of the English 

a. man take the oath of citizenship was to encourage lying and 
hypocrisy. Williams was a knight-errant who refused to abandon 
his crusade against the civil authorities, and they drove him 
from the colony in 1636. Making his difficult way southward in 
midwinter, through the forests, from one Indian tribe to another, 
he arrived at the head of Narragansett Bay, and purchasing a 
tract of land from the Indians, began a settlement which he 
called, in recognition of God's guidance. Providence. 

Other dissenters from Massachusetts followed, and soon four 
towns were established on the mainland about Narragansett 
Bay and on Rhode Island proper. In 1643 Williams secured 
recognition for his colony from the English Parliament, which 
the year before had driven King Charles from London. The 
little colony of " Rhode Island and Providence Plantations " 
so established was remarkable for two things, — democracy and 
religious freedom. Election "by papers " (ballots) was intro- 
duced, and the government was " held by free and voluntary 
consent of all the free inhabitants." All men might " walk as 
their conscience persuaded them, every one in the name of his 
God." The scornful orthodox brethren in Massachusetts called 
Rhode Island's population " the Lord's debris," while the 
facetious said that " if a man had lost his religion, he would be 
sure to find it in some Rhode Island village." Massachusetts 
further showed her spite against the dissenting settlers by re- 
fusing to admit Rhode Island into the confederation of New 
England colonies, formed in 1643 for protection against the In- 
dians ; and it was not till the colony had received a royal charter 
' from Charles II (1663) that it was securely established. For 
his heroic devotion to principles of freedom, far in advance of 
his age, Roger Williams deserves to be honored as one of the 
noblest figures in our colonial history. 
52. Connect!- The same year that Massachusetts drove Williams out of her 
by em^gra^nts jurisdiction the magistrates gave permission to " divers loving 
*if™ tt^^^Ve ffriends, neighbors, and ffreemen of Newetown (Cambridge), 
Dorchester, Watertown and other places, to transport themselves 



The English Colo7iies 



45 



and their estates unto the Ryver of Conecticott, there to reside 
and inhabit." These emigrants were partly attracted by the 
glowing reports of the fertility of the Connecticut valley, and 




The New England Settlements 



partly repelled by the extreme rigor of the Massachusetts " aris- 
tocracy of righteousness," which made impossible honest expres- 
sion of opinion. Led by their pastor, Thomas Hooker, they 
tramped across the wilderness between the Charles and the 
Connecticut, driving their cattle before them and carrying their 
household goods in wagons, — the first heralds of that mighty 



46 



The Establishment of the English 



westward movement which was to continue through two centuries 
to the Pacific Ocean. The Connecticut emigrants founded the 
towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield on the "long 
river." In 1639 they adopted their "Fundamental Constitu- 
tions," — the first constitution drawn up in America, and the 
first in modern history composed by the free founders of a 
state.* They did not require a man to be a church member in 




The Emigration to the Connecticut Valley, 1636 



order to vote, and their clergymen exercised far less influence 
over political life than those of the mother colony. Although 
they had trouble with Massachusetts, which still claimed that 
they were under her jurisdiction, and with the Dutch, who (as 
we shall see in the next section) had spread from the Hudson 
to the Connecticut, still the colonists of the river towns were 
strong enough to defend both their land and their government. 

1 The Mayflower agreement of 1620 was hardly a constitution, as it did not 
provide for a form of government, but only pledged its signers to obey the 
government which they should establish. 



The English Colo7ties 47 

After the extermination of the dangerous Pequot Indians in 53. connect!- 
1637 the colony flourished in secure and uneventful prosperity, pequotVar 
and remained, until the American Revolution, the least vexed °^ ^^37 
of all the English settlements. Until 1662 its existence was 
not recognized by the English government, but in that year 
Charles II, partly, no doubt, to raise up a powerful rival to 
Massachusetts, which all the- Stuarts hated for its assumption 
of independent airs, granted a most liberal charter to Connect- 
icut, extending its territory westward to the South Sea (the 
Pacific). We shall have occasion, a few pages later, to refer again 
to the Connecticut and Rhode Island charters of 1 662-1 663. 

A third colony, composed of men who came through rather 54. ThePuri- 
than ^z// ^ Massachusetts, was New -Haven. John Davenport, NewHaven°^ 
a stem Puritan divine, brought his congregation to Massachu- 1638-1655 
setts in the summer of 1637, when the colony was in the midst 
of the pitiless trial of Mistress Anne Hutchinson and her asso- 
ciates, who were accused of teaching the heresy of antinomian- 
ism, — a thing hard for even a trained theologian to understand, 
and impossible to explain here. Finding the strife-charged air 
of Boston uncongenial, Davenport and his congregation pushed 
on to the shores of Long Island Sound and founded the settle- 
ment of New Haven (1638). The colony, which soon expanded 
into several towns, was as strictly Puritan and "^^ theocratic " 
(God-ruled) as Massachusetts. The founders hoped to add 
worldly prosperity to their piety by making New Haven a great 
commercial port ; but the proximity of the unrivaled harbor of 
New York (then called New Amsterdam) rendered any such 
hope vain from the beginning. Instead of becoming an inde- 
pendent commercial colony. New Haven and her sister towns 
found themselves, to their disgust, included in the limits of 
Connecticut by the royal charter of 1662. They protested 
valiantly against the consolidation, but were forced in the end 
to yield. Thus the New Haven colony ceased to exist in 1665. 

With the process of radiation from Massachusetts of colonies 
to the south and west went a contrary process of absorption by 



48 



The Establishment of the English 



of Massachu- 
setts with 
the settle- 
ments of 
Gorges and 
Mason 



55. Relations Massachusetts of settlements to the north and east. Ferdinando 
Gorges was the father of these settlements. In spite of the 
failure of the Kennebec Colony in 1607, which "froze his hopes 
and made him sit down with his losses," as he quaintly wrote, 
Gorges's hopes soon thawed out again, and he labored till his 
death, forty years later, to establish colonies on the Maine coast. 
The Council for New England surrendered its charter to the 
king in 1635, but Gorges persisted single-handed. He got a 
charter in 1639, which made him proprietor of Maine. He pro- 
ceeded forthwith to establish an elaborate government for his 
puny province, in which almost every adult male was an office- 
holder ; and devised for his capital " Gorgeana " the first city 
government in America. Gorges was a deadly enemy of Mas- 
sachusetts. As a courtier he opposed the reforming party in 
Parliament, and as a stanch Church of England man he hated 
the whole Puritan movement. He was one of the foremost 
agitators for the suppression of the Massachusetts charter in 
1634, and labored strenuously to have strong anti-Puritan set- 
tlers emigrate to his province of Maine and to New Hampshire, 
the neighboring province of his fellow courtier and fellow church- 
man John Mason. By the terms of the charter of 1629 the 
territory of the Massachusetts Bay Company extended from 
three miles north of the Merrimac to three miles south of the 
Charles, and east and west from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
oceans. Now charters were granted by the Stuarts in reckless 
ignorance of the geography of America. Because the Merrimac 
flows east as it enters the sea, it was presumed that it flowed 
east throughout its course ; whereas it actually rises far to the 
north, in the lakes of New Hampshire. A line drawn to the 
coast, therefore, from a point three miles north of the source of 
the Merrimac would include all of the Maine and New Hamp- 
shire settlements (see map, p. 44). Massachusetts, having ascer- 
tained the true course of the river, laid claim to these settlements 
as lying in her territory. She annexed the New Hampshire 
towns in 1641-1643, and after a long quarrel over the Maine 



The English Colonies 49 

towns, finally bought the claims of Gorges's heirs for ;^i2 5o 
in 1677. Charles II was furious at the transaction. In 1679 
he separated New Hampshire from Massachusetts and gave it 
a royal governor ; but Maine remained part of the Bay Colony 
and then of the Bay State until 1820. 

The domination of Massachusetts over the other New Eng- 56. The 
land colonies, at least up to the time when Connecticut and fbs^utism in 
Rhode Island received their charters, was complete. She far chusett?^' 
surpassed them all in men and wealth. The New England Con- colony 
federation, formed in 1643 by Massachusetts, Plymouth, Con- 
necticut, and New Haven, chiefly for defense against the Indians, 
was theoretically a league of four equal states, each having two 
members with equal voice in the governing council. But the 
opposition of Massachusetts kept Rhode Island out of the con- 
federation, and in the question of declaring war on the Dutch 
colony of New Netherland in 1653 the two Massachusetts coun- 
cilors vetoed the unanimous vote of the other six. The habit of 
authority grows rapidly, especially when exercised by strong 
men who believe that they are God's instruments in keeping the 
faith and morals of the community unsullied. The second half 
of the seventeenth century exhibited the character of the colony 
in its most uncompromising and unlovely aspects. The large- 
minded, courteous Winthrop died in 1649, and was succeeded 
in the governorship by a harsh and bigoted Puritan " saint," 
John Endicott. Faithfulness to Puritan ideals reached a point 
of fanatic cruelty.' Quakers were hanged in 1660 on Boston 
Common for the crime of testifying to the " inner light," or 
special divine revelation (which of course made Church and 
clergy superfluous). Again, in 1692, nineteen persons, mostly 
women, were hanged in Salem village for witchcraft, or secret 
alliance with Satan, on the most unfair evidence of excited 
children and hysterical women. 

On its political side the increasing power of the magistrates 57. signs of 
of Massachusetts aroused the angry suspicions of the king. JendenV?n ' 
The colony banished Episcopalians, coined money, omitted the Massachusetts 



50 



The Establishment of the English 



58. Edmund 
Andros in 
Boston 



king's name in its legal forms, and broke his laws for the 
regulation of their trade. When he sent commissioners in 1664 
to investigate these conditions, they were insulted by a con- 
stable in a Boston tavern. Their chairman wrote back, " Our 
time is lost upon men puffed up with the spirit of independ- 
ence." Edmond Ran- 
dolph, sent over a few 
years later as a collector 
of revenues, complained 
that '' the king's letters 
are of no more account 
in Massachusetts than 
an old number of the 
London Gazetted ^ Fi- 
nally, Charles II, pro- 
voked beyond patience, 
had the Massachusetts 
charter annulled- in his 
court (1684), and the 
colony became a royal 
province. 

But before the great 
Puritan colony entered 
on its checkered career 
of the eighteenth century 
under royal governors, 
it bore a conspicuous 

part in the overthrow of that tyranny which the last Stuart king, 
James II, made unendurable for freeborn Englishmen. In 1686 
[ James united New York, New Jersey, and all New England 
into one great province, which should be a solid bulwark against 
the danger of French and Indian invasion from the north, and 




The Puritan (By Augustus St. Gaudens) 



1 Randolph came at just the moment when Massachusetts was elated at having 
led the New England colonies victoriously through the severe war with King 
Philip, 1676 (see note, p. 39). 



The English Colonies 



51 



where his governor should rule absolutely, unhampered by colo- 
nial charters or assemblies. He sent over Sir Edmund Andros 
as governor of this huge province extending from Delaware 
Bay to Nova Scotia. Andros was a faithful servant, an upright 
man, without guile or trickery, but a harsh, narrow, unbending 
governor, determined that the instructions of his royal master 
should be carried out to the letter. In pursuance of these 
instructions he attempted to 
seize the charters of Con- 
necticut and Rhode Island, 
but was baffled by the local 
patriots in both colonies. Ex- 
asperated by resistance, An- 
dros made his hand doubly 
heavy upon the Massachu- 
setts colony, which the Stuarts 
rightly looked upon as the 
stronghold of democratic sen- 
timent in America. He dis- 
missed the Massachusetts 
Assembly, abolished the colo- 
nial courts, dispensed justice 
himself, charging exorbitant 
fees, established a strict cen- 
sorship of the press, intro- 
duced the Episcopal worship 

in Boston, denied the colonists fair and speedy trials, and levied 
a land tax on them without the consent of their deputies. 

The patience of the colony was about exhausted when the 59. The 
welcome news arrived, in April, 1689, that James II had been oiution"V/^' 

driven from the EnHish throne. The inhabitants of Boston ^^^9 in Mas- 

, . sachusetts 

immediately responded by a popular rising against James's 

odious servant. Andros tried, like his master, to flee from the 

vengeance of the people he had so grievously provoked, but he 

was seized and imprisoned, and later sent back to England. 




Governor Edmund Andros 



5 2 The Establishment of the English 

The town meeting of Boston assumed the government, ap- 
pointed a committee of safety, and sent envoys to London to 
learn the will of the new king, William of Orange. Thus the 
"Glorious Revolution" of 1689 in Massachusetts was truly a 
part of the English Revolution of 1688, and a foreshadowing 
of the greater Revolution begun eighty-six years later by the 
descendants of the men who expelled Andros in defense of the 
principles of the men who expelled James II. 
60. The new King William granted a new charter to Massachusetts in 
settsTharter ^^Q^j while Connecticut and Rhode Island quietly resumed 
of 1691 government under their old charters, retaining them as state 

constitutions well into the nineteenth century. The new Mas- 
sachusetts charter provided for the union of Plymouth with 
the Bay colony under a royal governor, and broke down the 
old Puritan regime by guaranteeing freedom of worship to all 
Protestant sects, and making the possession of property in- 
stead of membership in the church the basis of political rights. 
Under this charter the Massachusetts colony lived until the 
American Revolution. 



The Proprietary Colonies 

61. The cor- Virginia and Massachusetts were corporate colonies, founded 
nies (founded by companies of men (corporations) to whom the king gave 
bycompanies) charters, or the right to establish governments in certain speci- 
fied territory of America. We have seen how the Virginia 
Company lost its charter quite early in its history (1624), and 
became the first royal province, ruled by a governor and coun- 
cil appointed by the king. We have seen also how the Massa- 
chusetts Company, by the emigration of its leading members 
with the charter to America, became a self-governing colony, 
much to the king's chagrin. Finally, we have seen how Mas- 
sachusetts sent out as offshoots the self-governing colonies 
of Rhode Island and Connecticut, which were recognized by 
Charles IPs charters of 166 2-1 663. All the rest of the thirteen 



The English Colonies 53 

colonies, which were later to unite to form the American nation, 
were founded 2.^ proprietorships} 

The proprietorship was a sort of middle thing between the 62. The 
royal province and the self-governing colony. The king let p^o^^rietary^^ 
the reins of government out of his own hands, but did not give Province 
them into the hands of the colonists. Between the king and 
the settlers stood the proprietor, a man or a small group of 
men, generally courtiers, to whom the king had granted the 
province. In the royal provinces the king himself, through his 
Privy Council, appointed governors, established courts, collected 
taxes, and attended to the various details of executive govern- 
ment. In the self-governing colonies the people elected their 
governors and other executive officers, civil and military, and 
controlled them through their democratic legislatures. In the 
proprietary provinces the lords proprietors appointed the gov- 
ernors, established courts, collected a land tax (quitrent) from 
the inhabitants, offered bonuses to settlers, and in general man- 
aged their provinces like farms or any other business venture, 
subject always to the limitations imposed by the terms of their 
charter from the king, and the opposition of their legislatures 
in the colonies.^ 

The only enduring proprietorship established under the early 63. Mary- 
Stuarts was Maryland. In 1632 George Calvert (Lord Balti- tyCaivert 

more), a Roman Catholic nobleman high in the favor of the (LordBaiti- 
^' ^ more), 1634 

court, obtained from Charles I the territory between the Poto- 
mac River and the fortieth parallel of latitude, with a very lib- 
eral charter. The people of Maryland were to enjoy '^ all the 
privileges, franchises, and liberties " of English subjects ; no tax 

1 The proprietorship was not only the commonest form of colonial grant, but 
it was also the earliest. Queen Elizabeth's patents to Gilbert and Raleigh were 
of this nature, and in the first half of the seventeenth century there were many 
attempts of proprietors, less heroically persistent than Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 
to found colonies on our shores. 

2 All the proprietors except the Duke of York, King Charles II's brother, 
forthwith granted their provinces assemblies elected by the people. They could 
not, in fact, get settlers on any other terms. In the royal provinces, too, the 
popularly elected assemblies were retained. 








=^i. 



. Proprietary Grants made by the Stuart Kings 

Showing how seven eighths of the Atlantic seaboard was granted to court 
favorites between 1630 and 1680 

54 



The English Colonies 55 

was to be levied by the Crown on persons or goods within the 
colony ; laws were to be made " by the proprietor, with the 
advice ... of the freemen of the colony." George Calvert died 
before the king's great seal was affixed to the charter, but his 
son, Cecilius Calvert, sent a colony in 1634 to St. Marys, on 
the shores of Chesapeake Bay. 

The second Lord Baltimore was a man of consummate tact, 64. Trials of 
broad and generous in his views, unflagging in devotion to his tors ^of Mary- 
colony. He needed all his tact, nobility, and courage to meet ^^°^ 
the difficulties with which he had to struggle. In the first place, 
the smiling tract of land granted to him by King Charles lay 
within the boundaries of the grant of King James to the Vir- 
ginia Company (see map, p. 28). A Virginian fur trader named 
Claiborne was already established on Kent Island in Chesapeake 
Bay, and refused either to retire or to give allegiance to the 
Catholic Lord Baltimore. It came to war with the Virginian 
Protestants before Claiborne was dislodged. Again, Lord Balti- 
more interpreted the words of the charter, that laws were to be 
made '^by the proprietor, with the advice ... of the freemen," 
to mean that the proprietor was to frame the laws and the free- 
men accept them ; but the very first assembly of Maryland took 
the opposite view, insisting that the proprietor had only the right 
of approving or vetoing laws which they had passed. Baltimore 
tactfully yielded. 

Religious strife also played an important part in the troubled 65. The toi- 
history of the Maryland settlement. Lord Baltimore had founded ^^^^ 
his colony partly as an asylum for the persecuted Roman 
Catholics of England, who were regarded as idolaters by both 
the New England Puritans and the Virginia Episcopalians. 
To have Mass celebrated at St. Marys was, in the eyes of 
the intolerant Protestants, to pollute the soil of America. As 
Baltimore tolerated all Christian sects in his province, the 
Protestants simply flooded out the Catholics of Maryland by 
immigration from Virginia, New England, and old England. 
Eight years after the establishment of the colony the Catholics 



56 The Establishment of the English 

formed less than 25 per cent of the inhabitants, and in 1649 
the proprietor was obliged to protect his fellow religionists 
in Maryland by getting the assembly to pass the famous 
Toleration Act, providing that " no person in this province 
professing to believe iii Jesus Christ shall be in any ways 
troubled, molested, or discountenanced for his or her religion 
... so that they be not unfaithful to the lord proprietary or 
molest or conspire against the civil government established." 
Although this is the first act of religious toleration on the 

A L, A W 

MARYLAND 

Concerning 

RELIGION. 

aOnr-nuch u ia awellgoverned and Chriftiin Commonw ealth, Matttrs concerning Religion and the Honour of God ourfit to be in ihefirff 

I pla e to be taken intolerious confidcration, and endeavoured to be fettled. Be it therefore Ordained and EoaOed by the Right Honounble 

e^^BCfLlUS Lord Baronof 5«ft"»;«,abrolute Lord and Pxoprietary ofthis Province, with thej*dvice and Confent of the Upper and 

Lower Houle ofihij General AITembly, That whnfocver perfon or perfons within this Province and ihe Ifland» thereunto belonging, Ifaall 

fK),iihenceforihblarphemeGOD,thatiscurrehim; or (hall deny our Saviour JESUS CHRIST to be the Son of God > orlhalldeny 

ihe Holy Trinity,ihcFaiher,Son,& Holy Ghoftiorihe Godhead of any ofthefaidThreePerfoni of the Trinity.or the Unity of theGodhead^ 

ufe or utter any reproachful fpceches, words, or language, concerning the Hjly Trinity, or any of the faid three Perfoni thereof, Diall bepu- 

niQied with death, and confifcation orforfciiuteofallhisorherLandsandG*»dstotheLord Proprietary and his Heirs. 

And beitalfo enaOedbv the Authority,and wiih the advice and affent afofjfaid, That whatloererperfonorperronslliall from Benceforth ufc or utter 

anyreproachfulwordsorfpecohesconcerningtheblclTed Virgin J/.,^/!/", the Mother of our Sariour, or the holy Apofllei or Evaogelifts, or any of themr^ 

(hail in fuch cafe for the firft Offence forfeit to the faid Lord Proprietary and hit Heirs,Ij>rdsand Proprietaries of this Province, tTie fum of Five pounds 

Sierling.onhe value ihercofto be levied on the goods and chattels of every fuch perfon fo offending; but in cafe fuch ofitnder or ofifcnders (hall not then 

havegoodsandchatielsfufficient for the faiisfymg of fuch forfeiture, or that the iame be not otherwifefpeedilylatisEed, that then fuch offtnder or offtnd 

rhallbepublicklywhipt,andbeimpnfoncdduringilicp!eari. -■-•-• ■ - ^. .-^ <■ .t. r,„ :^-- <•_ 

: being : And that every fuch oflinder and.offcndcrs for every 

i or incafe fuch offenderoroBenders (hall not then havego 

;rely whipt and imprifuncd as before is cxpreffcd: and that e 

third olfence. forfeit all his lands and goods, and be for evci* banilht and expelled out of this Province. 

Facsimile of the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 



trs fhall bepublickly whipt, and be impnfoncd during ilicpleafurcof (he Lord Proprietary, or the Lieutenant or Chief Governor of this Province for the- 
time being : And that every fuch offender andoffcndcrs for every fccond offsncc (hall forfeit Ten Pounds Sterling, or the value theroof to be levied as afore- 
faidi or incafe fuch offenderoroBenders (hall not then havegoodsandchattelswithinthis Province fuflicieot fprthat purpofe.thentb be publickly and' 



Statute books of the American colonies, we should remember 
that Roger Williams, thirteen years earlier, had founded Rhode 
Island on principles of religious toleration more complete than 
those of the Maryland Act ; for by the italicized words of the 
latter, Jews or freethinkers would be excluded from Lord Balti- 
more's domain. By 1658 the fierce strife between Catholic and 
Protestant had been allayed, and Maryland settled down to a 
peaceful and prosperous development. The tremendous wave 
of anti-Catholic sentiment that followed the overthrow of the 
Stuarts (1689) swept the Baltimores out of their proprietorship ; 
but on the conversion of the family to Protestantism in 17 15, 



The English Colonies 57 

the province of Maryland was restored to them and remained 
under their rule until the American Revolution. 

During the first five years of his reign (i 660-1 665) Charles II 66. interest 
was much occupied with the American colonies. We have already stuarts in*^the 
seen how the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut were colonies 
granted in 1662-1663, and we shall see in the next section how 
busily the king regulated colonial trade in 1 660-1 663. The 
years 1 663-1 665 saw the establishment of three new English 
colonies in America, — Carolina, New York, and New Jersey. 

In 1663 Charles II granted to a group of eight noblemen 67. The set- 
about his court the huge tract of land between Virginia and histcfiy o^°t1ie 
the Spanish settlement of Florida, extending westward to the caroiinas, 

A TO I 663-1 729 

" South Sea " (Pacific Ocean). The charter gave the proprie- 
tors power to make laws, " with the assent, advice, and appro- 
bation of the freemen of the colony," to grant lands, collect 
duties and quitrents, establish courts, appoint magistrates, erect 
forts, found cities, make war, and allow the settlers " such in- 
dulgences and dispensations in religious affairs as they should 
think proper and reasonable," — powers as ample as Lord Balti- 
more's in Maryland. But the board of proprietors were not 
equal to Lord Baltimore in tact, energy, and devotion to the 
interests of the colony. Too many cooks spoiled the broth. The 
initial mistake was the attempt to enforce a ridiculously elab- 
orate constitution, the " Grand Model," composed for the occa- 
sion by the celebrated English philosopher John Locke, and 
utterly unfit for a sparse and struggling settlement. A community 
grew up on the Chowan River (1670), founded by some mal- 
contents from Virginia, and another on the shore of the Ashley 
River, three hundred miles to the south. The latter settlement 
was transferred ten years later (1680) to the site of the modem 
city of Charleston, South Carolina. These two widely separated 
settlements developed gradually into North and South Carolina 
respectively. The names are used as early as 1691, but the 
colony was not officially divided and provided with separate gov- 
ernors until 171 1. There is little in the history of the Carolinas 



58 



The Establishment of the E7iglish 



to detain us. It is a story of inefficient government, of wrang- 
ling and discord between people and governors, governors and 
proprietors, proprietors and king. North Carolina has been de- 
scribed as " a sanctuary of runaways," where " every one did 
what was right in his own eyes, paying tribute neither to God 
nor to Caesar."^ The Spaniards incited the Indians to attack 
the colony from the south, and pirates swarmed in the harbors 
and creeks of the coast. Finally, the assembly of South Carolina, 

burdened by an enormous 
debt from the Spanish- 
Indian wars, offered the 
lands of the province for 
sale to settlers on its own 
terms. The proprietors 
vetoed this action, which 
invaded their chartered 
rights. Then the assembly 
renounced obedience to the 
proprietor's magistrates, 
and petitioned King 
George I to be taken under 
his protection as a royal 
province (17 19). It was 
the only case in our colo- 
nial history of a proprietary 
government overthrown by its own assembly. Ten years later 
(1729) the proprietors sold their rights and interests in both 
Carolinas to the crown for the paltry sum of ^{^5 0,000. So two 
more colonies were added to the growing list of royal provinces. 
While the Carolina proprietors were inviting settlers to their 
new domain, an English fleet sent out by Charles II's brother, 
the Duke of York, sailed into New York harbor and demanded 

1 William Byrd, a brilliant Virginian writer, described the lawless state of 
North Carolina in 1720 in the following catchy Latin couplet; 

De tributo Caesaris nemo cogitabat, 
Omnes erant Caesares, nemo censum dabat. 




Henry Hudson's Vessel, the Half Moon, 
in the Hudson 



The Ejiglish Colonies 59 

the surrender of the feebly garrisoned Dutch fort on Manhat- 68. The 

tan Island (September, 1664). The fort was commanded by mentofNew 

Peter Stuyvesant, director general of the Dutch colony of New Netheriand, 

Netherland. About a hundred years earlier the Dutch, driven 

from their peaceful pursuits of farming and cheese-making by a 

long and cruel war with Spain, had taken to the sea and laid the 

foundations of that colonial empire which is to-day the chief 

wealth and pride of their little kingdom. Seeking to cripple 

Spain at all points, they had sent their ships east and west, to 

seize the enemy's treasure fleets, to establish forts and trading 

posts, and to find the northern passage to the Indies. Thus in 

the early autumn of 1609 Henry Hudson, an Englishman in 

the service of Holland, sailed into the spacious harbor of New 

York and up the majestic river which now bears his name. 

About five years later the Dutch established fortified trading 

posts on Manhattan Island and a few miles below the present 

city of Albany, and in 162 1 the territory on the Hudson was 

granted by the States-General (Parliament) of Holland to the 

Dutch West India Company. 

The company did not make a success of the colony, although 69. The ill 
it offered tracts of land miles deep along both sides of the river ilJItch^coiony^ 
to rich proprietors (" patroons "), with feudal privileges of trade 
arid government, and in 1638 abolished all monopolies, opening 
trade and settlement to all nations, and making liberal offers of 
land, stock, and implements to tempt farmers. Even the city 
of New Amsterdam (New York), with its magnificent situation 
for commerce, reached a population of only sixteen hundred dur- 
ing rfie half century that it was under Dutch rule. The West 
India Company, intent on the profits of the fur trade with the 
Indians of central New York, would not spend the money neces- 
sary for the development and defense of the colony. They sent 
over director generals who had little concern for the welfare of 
the people, and refused to allow any popular assembly. If the 
settlers protested that they wanted a government like New Eng- 
land's, " where neither patroons, lords, nor princes were known, 



on the Hudson 



6o The Establishment of the English 

but only the people," they were met with the insulting threat 
of being "hanged on the tallest tree in the land." Furthermore, 
the Dutch magistrates were continually involved in territorial 
quarrels. They had settled on the land granted by James I in 
1606 to the London and Plymouth companies, and had been 
immediately warned by them to leave it. They replied humbly 
at first that they " had found no English there," and " hoped 
they were not trespassing," but later they assumed a defiant 
tone. They disputed the right to the Connecticut valley with 
the emigrants from Massachusetts, and claimed the land along 
the lower banks. of the South River (the Delaware), from which 
they had driven out some Swedish settlers by force,^ although 
the land lay plainly within the boundaries of Lord Baltimore's 
charter. In 1653, when England was at war with Holland, New 
Netherland was saved from the attack of the New England colo- 
nies only by the selfish veto of Massachusetts on the unanimous 
vote of the other members of the Confederation of New England. 
70. TheEng- Every year the English realized more clearly the necessity of 

IlSil SclZu Xuv 

Dutch colony, getting rid of this alien colony, which lay like a wedge between 
Amsterdain^ New England and the Southern plantations, controlling the 
valuable route of the Hudson and making the enforcement of 
the trade laws in America impossible. In 1664, therefore, 
Charles II, on the verge of a commercial war with Holland, 
granted to his brother, the Duke of York, the territory between 
the Connecticut and Delaware rivers as a proprietary province. 
The first the astonished burghers of New Amsterdam knew of 
this transaction was the appearance of the duke's fleet in the 
harbor, with the curt summons to surrender the fort. Director 
General Stuyvesant, the " valiant, weather-beaten, mettlesome, 
obstinate, leather-sided, lion-hearted old governor," as Diedrich 

1 Although without the shadow of a claim by discovery and exploration, the 
Swedish court imitated those of England, France, and Holland by giving to its 
subjects charters to establish settlements on the shores of the New World. Be- 
tween 1638 and 1647 five or six Swedish trading posts were set up along the 
banks of the Delaware River, near its mouth, but the home government made no 
provision for their defense and they were easily captured by the Dutch in 1655. 



becomes New- 
York 



The English Colonies 6 1 

Knickerbocker calls him, fumed and stormed, declaring that he 
would never surrender. But resistance was hopeless. The burgh- 
ers persuaded the irate governor to yield, although his gunners 
had their fuses lighted. New Netherland fell without a blow, 
and the English flag waved over an unbroken coast from Canada 
to Carolina. 

There are still many traces in New York of its fifty years' 71. what the 
occupancy by the Dutch. The names of the old Knickerbocker queathed to 
families remind us of the patroons' estates ; and from the car ^^^ ^^^^ 
windows one gets glimpses of the high Dutch stoops and quaint 
market places in the villages along the Hudson, or sees a group 
of men at sundown still rolling the favorite old Dutch game of 
bowls, which Rip van Winkle found the dwarfs playing in the 
Catskills. But a far more significant bequest of New Nether- 
land to New York was the spirit of absolute government. Under 
the Dutch rule the people were without charter or popular as- 
sembly, and the new English proprietor was content to keep 
things as they were, publishing his own code of laws for the 
province (the "Duke's Laws"). It was not till 1683 that he 
yielded to pressure from his own colony and the neighbors in 
New England and Pennsylvania, and granted an assembly. Two ^^ ^^^^ 

years later, on coming to the throne as James II, he revoked 
this grant and made New York the pattern of absolute govern- 
ment to which he tried to make all the English colonies north 
of Maryland conform. What success his viceroy Andros had in 
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut we have already 
seen (p. 51). In New York the deputy-governor, Nicholson, 
deserted his post and sailed back to England.^ When the new 

1 The " revolution " in New York was headed by a fanatical demagogue, a 
German merchant named Jacob Leisler, who appropriated to himself the author- 
ity laid down by Nicholson, and refused to surrender the fort on the Battery 
to King William's accredited agent before the arrival of the new governor. For 
this obstinate conduct Leisler was hanged as a traitor, although he protested that 
his only purpose in holding the reins of power was to prevent the Catholics in 
the colony from getting control of the government and betraying it to the French 
in Canada. He had done nothing more "treasonable" than had the leaders of 
the " glorious Revolution " in Massachusetts. 



62 



The Establishment of the English 



governor sent by King William III arrived in 1 691, he brought 
orders to restore the popular assembly which James II had sup- 
pressed, and from that time on the colony enjoyed the privilege 
of. self-government. 

New York grew slowly. At the time of the foundation of 
our national government it was only one of the '' small states " 
as compared with Massachusetts, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. 




The Battery, New York, at the End of the Seventeenth Century 

The immense Empire State of to-day, with its nine million 
inhabitants, is the growth of the last three generations. It be- 
gan when the Erie Canal, and later the New York Central Rail- 
road, made the Hudson and Mohawk valleys the main highway 
to the Great Lakes and the growing West. 
72. The set- Even before the Duke of York had ousted the Dutch magis- 
history of the trates from his new province, he granted the lower part of it. 
Jerseys ixor^ the Hudson to the Delaware, to two of his friends, who 

were also members of the Carolina board of proprietors, Lord 
Berkeley, brother of the irritable governor of Virginia, and Sir 



The English Colonies 63 

George Carteret, formerly governor of the island of Jersey in 
the English Channel. In honor of Carteret the region was named 
New Jersey (June, 1664). The proprietors of New Jersey im- 
mediately published " concessions '.' for their colony, — a liberal 
constitution granting full religious liberty and a popular assem- 
bly with control of taxation. In 1674 the proprietors divided 
their province into East and West Jersey, and from that date to 
the end of the century the Jerseys had a turbulent history, de- 
spite the fact that both parts of the colony, after various trans- 
fers of proprietorship, came under the control of the peace-loving 
sect of Friends, or Quakers.^ There were constant quarrels be- 
tween proprietors and governors, between governors and legis- 
latures, until New Jersey revolted, with the rest of the American 
colonies, from the rule of Great Britain. 

One of the Quaker proprietors of West Jersey in the early 73. wiiiiam 
days was William Penn, a young man high in the favor of the pennsyi- 
Duke of York and his royal brother Charles, on account of the "^^^^' ^^^^ 
services of his father. Admiral Penn, to the Stuart cause. When 
the old admiral died he left a claim for some sixteen thousand 
pounds against King Charles II, and William Penn, attracted 
by the idea of a Quaker settlement in the New World, accepted 
from the king a tract of land in payment of the debt. He was 
granted an immense region west of the Delaware River, which 
he named " Sylvania" (woodland), but which the king, in honor, 
he said, of the admiral, insisted on calling Pennsylvania (1681).^ 

1 The Friends, or Quakers, were a religious sect founded in England by 
George Fox in the middle of the seventeenth century. They believed that the 
" inner light," or the illumination of the Divine Spirit in each man's conscience, 
was a sufficient guide for conduct and worship. They were extreme " democrats," 
refusing to remove their hats in the presence of any magistrate. The Quakers 
had begun to come to America as early as 1653 to preach their doctrines of reli- 
gious and political independence. We have already seen how cruelly they were 
persecuted by the Puritan authorities of Massachusetts (p. 49). In every colony 
except Rhode Island they were oppressed, until William Penn realized the dream 
of their founder and established a Quaker colony in the New World. 

2 According to the charter Penn's grant was bounded on the south " by a circle 
drawne at twelve miles distant from Newcastle, Northward and Westward unto 
the beginning of the 40th degree of Northern latitude." This confusing language 
is made all the more unintelligible by the fact that a circle drawn at a radius distance 



64 The Establishment of the English 

Charles II was in the midst of his quarrel with the stiff-necked 
colony of Massachusetts, and was no longer willing to grant pro- 
prietors the almost unlimited powers which he had granted to 
Lord Baltimore and the Duke of York. The Penn charter con- 
tained provisions that the colony must always keep an agent 
in London, that the Church of England must be tolerated, that 
the king might veto any act of the assembly within five years 
after its passage, and that the Efiglish Parliament should have 
the right to tax the colony. 
74. The pros- Penn offered attractive terms to settlers. Land was sold at 
PennVcoiony ten dollars the hundred acres, complete religious freedom was 
allowed, a democratic assembly was summoned, and the Indians 
(Delawares), already humbled by their northern foes, the Iro- 
quois' were rendered still less dangerous by Penn's fair dealing 
with them. Emigrants came in great numbers, especially the 
Protestants from the north of Ireland, who were annoyed by 
cruel landlords and oppressive trade laws ; and the German 
Protestants of the Rhine country,^ against whom Louis XIV of 
France was waging a crusade. In the first half of the eighteenth 
century the population of Pennsylvania grew from twenty 
thousand to two hundred thousand. Philadelphia, the " city of 
brotherly love," which Penn had planned in 1683 '^ to resemble 
a green and open country town," soon outstripped New York 
in population, wealth, and culture, and remained throughout the 
eighteenth century the leading city in the American colonies. Its 
neat brick houses, its paved and lighted streets, its printing 
presses, schools, hospital and asylum, its library (1731), philo- 
sophical society (1743), and university (1749) all testified to the 
enlightenment and humanity of Penn's colony, and especially 

of twelve miles from Newcastle does not touch the fortieth degree of latitude. 
Lord Baltimore's charter of 1632 gave him all the land "which lyeth under the 
40th degree." The heirs of Penn and Baltimore quarreled over the boundary 
line for two full generations. Finally, in 1 764-1 767, two English surveyors, Mason 
and Dixon, ran the present boundary line (at 39° 43' 26''')) which was agreed on 
by both proprietors. For the disputed territory see map, p. 54. 
1 The ancestors of the " Pennsylvania Dutch." 



The Eno-tish Colonies 



6s 



75. Character 
of William 
Penn 



to the genius and industry of its leading citizen, the celebrated 
Benjamin Franklin (170 6- 1790). 

William Penn was the greatest of the founders of the Ameri- 
can colonies. He had all the liberality of Roger Williams with- 
out his impetuousness, all the fervor of John Winthrop without 
a trace of intolerance, all the tact of Lord Baltimore with still 
greater industry and zeal. He was far in advance of his age in 
humanity. At a time when scores of offenses were punishable 
by death in England, he made murder the only capital crime in 
his colony. Prisons gen- 
erally were • filthy dun- 
geons, but Penn made 
his prisons workhouses 
for the education and cor- 
rection of malefactors. 
His province was the first 
to raise its voice against 
slavery (in the German- 
town protest of 1688), 
and his humane treat- 
ment of the Indians has 
passed into the legend 
of the spreading elm and 

the wampum belts familiar to every American school child. 
When Penn's firm hand was removed from the province (17 12), 
disputes and wranglings increased between governor and as- 
sembly over taxes, land transfers, trade, and defense ; but the 
colony remained in the possession of the Penn family through- 
out the American colonial period. 

Disappointed that his charter of 1681 gave him no coast line, 
Penn persuaded the Duke of York in 1682 to release to him 
the land which Stuyvesant had wrested from the Swedes on ^°g"°^^®^' 
the Delaware in 1655, and which, in spite of Baltimore's pro- 
tests, had been held as a part of New York ever since the 
English " conquest " of 1664. This territory, called the '' Three 




Penn treating with the Indians 
From an old woodcut 



76. Penn se- 
cures the 
"Three Lower 



66 The Establishment of the English 

Lower Counties," Penn governed by a deputy. The Lower 
Counties were separated from Pennsylvania in 1702, and, 
under the name of the colony of Delaware, were given their 
own legislature ; but they remained a part of the proprietary 
domain of the Penn family till the American Revolution. 
77. The col- For the sake of completeness we must mention among these 
foundedtT^33^ proprietorships the colony of Georgia, although it was founded 
long after the Stuart dynasty had given place to the House 
of Hanover on the English throne. In the year that George 
Washington was born (1732), James Oglethorpe obtained from 
Parliament a charter granting to a body of trustees for twenty- 
one years the government of the unsettled part of the old Caro- 
lina territory south of the Savannah River. It was a combined 
charitable, business, and political venture. Oglethorpe, who, as 
chairman of a parliamentary committee of investigation, had 
been horrified by the condition of English prisons, wished to 
provide an opportunity for poor debtors and criminals to work 
out their salvation in the New World. The Church was anx- 
ious for the conversion of the Indians on the Carolina bor- 
ders. Capitalists saw in the projected silk and wine cultivation a 
promise of large profits. And the government, drifting already 
toward the war with Spain which was declared in 1739, was 
glad to have the English frontier extended southward toward 
the Spanish settlement of Florida. So Parliament, the society 
for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts, the Bank of 
England, and many private citizens contributed toward the new 
colony, which was established on the banks of the Savannah in 
1733, and named Georgia after the reigning king, George II. 
Slavery was forbidden in the new colony, also the traffic in rum, 
which was a disgrace to the New England colonies of Massa- 
chusetts and Rhode Island. But the colony did not prosper. 
The convicts were poor workers. The industries started were 
unsuited to the land. Not wine and silk, but rice and cotton, 
were destined to be the foundation of Georgia's prosperity. 
Oglethorpe battled manfully for his failing colony, and defeated 



The English Colonies 6/ 

the Spaniards on land and sea ; but the trustees had to sur 
render the government to the king in 1752. The founder of the 
last American colony lived to see the United States acknowl- 
edged by Great Britain and the other powers of Europe as an 
independent nation. 

The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century 

We have now traced the history of the establishment of the 78. Tendency 

English colonies in America. It remains to devote a few pages J^ become°^^^ 

to the economic and social condition of the colonies in their foyai prov- 
inces 
maturity in the eighteenth century. 

A glance at the accompanying table and map (pp. 68 and 
69) will show how steady the tendency was for the colonies, 
especially those founded by proprietors, to become royal prov- 
inces. Only Connecticut and Rhode Island escaped at least a 
short period of the king's control ; and repeated proposals 
were made in Parliament in the early years of the eighteenth 
century to suppress the few remaining colonial charters and 
unite all the colonies into one large provifice of the English 
crown, to be governed by the king's officers and provided with 
a provincial assembly. The causes for this tightening of royal 
control lay partly in the incompetency and selfishness of the 
proprietors, partly in the European politics,^ partly in the need 
for protection against the French in Canada and their Indian 
allies. But the chief cause of the king's interference in colonial 
affairs was his desire to control their trade and manufactures for 
his own profit. 

The political economists of the seventeenth and eighteenth 79. The mer- 
centuries quite commonly believed that a nation's wealth was ^^ Gommerce 
measured not by the amount of desirable goods which it could 
produce and exchange, but by the quantity of gold and silver 

• 1 With the accession of William of Orange, in 1689, England was involved in 
a long period of war with France, and needed to concentrate all her resources. 
See Cheyney's Short History of England, chap. xvii. 



68 



The Establishmejit of the English 



which it could amass, — the miser's ideal. In accordance with 
this "mercantile" theory of commerce, as it was called, every 
nation tried to buy as little from others and sell as much to 
others as possible, so that the " favorable balance " of cash 




Map illustrating the Growth in the Number of Royal Provinces from 

1682 to 1752 

The royal provinces are colored red 

might come into its coffers. Naturally the European countries 
would look on their colonies, then, as places in which to sell 
goods. The colonies should furnish the raw materials — iron, 
wool, furs, hides — to the mother country, and then should buy 
back the finished products — steel, clothing, hats, shoes — 
from the mother country, paying the difference in coin. Where 







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69 



70 



The Establishment of the English 



the money was to come from, when the colonies were forbidden 
either to manufacture goods themselves or to sell raw material to 
the other nations, does not seem greatly to have concerned the Eu- 
ropean statesmen. They believed that colonies existed for the ad- 
vantage of the mother country, and that if they could not increase 
the flow of gold and silver into her treasury, they were useless. 



80. The 
Navigation 
Acts of 
1660-1663 



AN 

FOR 

Increafe of Shi 



ACT 



pping, 

And tncouragemcnt of the 

V I G A T I O N 

OF THIS 




So Charles II 's ministers were 
neither more nor less at fault than 
those of the European countries 
generally, when in 1 660-1 663 
they fastened on the American 
colonies the Navigation Acts, or 
laws of trade. No goods could be 
carried into or out of the colonies 
except in ships built in the English 
domains and manned by crews of 
which three fourths at feast were 
English subjects. No foreign goods 
could be brought into the colonies 
without first stopping in England 
to pay duties or be inspected. 
Certain "enumerated articles," in- 
cluding tobacco, cotton, furs, sugar, 
rice, could not be exported from 
the colonies to any port outside 
the British domain ; and all colo- 
nial manufactures which competed 
with English industry were forbidden. To be sure, England 
softened the effect of the Navigation Acts by giving the enu- 
merated colonial goods the preference, or even a monopoly, 
in her markets, and, by a system of " drawbacks " or re- 
bates, reduced the duties which the colonies had to pay on 
goods shipped through English ports. But nevertheless it was a 
great hindrance to the commercial prosperity of the colonies to 
forbid them to buy and sell directly in the markets of Europe, 



N A 

NATION. 

■£)? tl)t 31ncrcare oE 
jt^c ftlXppingaubtlje 
tncouragemcnt of tlje 
/Rabigatton of tl)fs 
i^atton, lDl)(cftunDec 
tl)e gooD p^obiDence 
ant)p?otctt(onof(5oo, 
IS fo great a means of 
ti)tnaeifattanDS>afc= 
tp of tft(s Commons 
IbealtD; 15e (tenacteDbp tt)(s parent idarUa- 
iiient, anD tl)e mutf)Oj<tp tljeteof , 5CDat front 
anD after tl)e jflrQOapof December, C>nc tljott* 
fani) fi]c IjunOKD fif tp one, anD from tOenttfo?:> 
IDatDs , il^o (Ipoods 0} CommoDitfes iDtatfo^ 
eDer, of tlie (Pjoibtt), ^;oDuct(on o} ^anufa^ 
ttnre of Afia , Affiica oj America , 0) of anp part 
thereof; O) of anp^lQanDs belonging to tljtni, 
oj anp of tl)cm , o? ibbicU are oefcribeo o; lafl) 
DolDn <n tlje ufual fi^aps oj CarDs of tl)ofe 
places, astbcllof tljcCngUfb jDlantattons as 
otljkts, tballbeSmpojteo o?WoosJjt<ntotl)» 
„<l5i Coin* 

Facsimile of the Navigation Act 
of 1651 ■ 



The English Colonies ' yi 

and a serious threat to their industrial life to prohibit their rising 
manufactures. It was like killing the goose that laid the golden 
eggs. For only by their trade with the French and Spanish Indies, 
which wanted their timber and furs, could the colonies get that 
coin which England demanded to maintain her " favorable bal- 
ance." The fact that five sixths of the laws passed by Parlia- 
ment from 1689 to 1760, touching the colonies, were for the 
regulation of trade and manufactures shows how serious was 
this policy of restricting the commerce and industry of America. 
But for all the laws of Parliament, illicit trade flourished, and 
was the foundation of many a considerable colonial fortune. 
Probably 90 per cent of the tea, wine, fruit, sugar, and molasses 
consumed in the colonies was smuggled. " If the king of Eng- 
land," said James Otis, " were encamped on Boston Common 
with twenty thousand men, and had all his navy on our coast, 
he could not execute these laws." 

Fortunately for the economic life of the colonies, the king's 81. why the 
ministers did not devote their serious attention to the enforce- Acts were^ot 
ment of the Navigation Acts until the eighteenth century was enforced 
some sixty years old. War with Louis XIV of France began 
when William of Orange ascended the English throne in 1689, 
and lasted almost uninterruptedly to the treaty of Utrecht (i 7 13). 
Then for twenty years England's great peace minister, Robert 
Walpole, directed the government, wisely overlooking the irreg- 
ularities of colonial commerce so long as its prosperity contrib- 
uted to England's wealth and quiet. Toward the middle of the 
century the war with France was renewed, and the decade 1750- 
1760 witnessed the culmination of the mighty struggle for the 
New World between France and England, which will be the 
subject of our next chapter. We shall see how the removal of 
the French from America affected the colonial policy of Eng- 
land. Our interest at present is in noting that the long period 
of England's " salutary neglect " permitted the colonies to de- 
velop their trade and manufactures to a considerable degree, in 
spite of the oppressive Navigation Acts. 



72 The Establishment of the English 

82. The The American colonists numbered about 1,300,000 in the 
thrcofonies^ middle of the eighteenth century. They were mostly of English 

in the eight- gtock, thousfh the Dutch were still numerous on the Hudson 
eenth century > o 

and the Delaware. French Huguenots had come in considerable 

numbers to the middle and lower colonies, Germans from the 
Rhine country had settled in Pennsylvania, and the Scotch-Irish, 
that sterling, hardy race of men which has given us some of the 
most distinguished names in our history, had come in great num- 
bers to Pennsylvania, and thence passed up the Shenandoah 
valley into Virginia and the Carolinas. Immigration practically 
ceased about 1730, not to be renewed on a large scale until the 
age of steamships a century later. There were between two 
and three hundred thousand negro slaves distributed through 
the colonies, — a few house servants and men of all work in the 
New England States, a greater number in the Middle States 
and Virginia, while farther south they even outnumbered the 
whites in some districts of South Carolina and Georgia. 

83. Types of There were well-defined types of colonial society, due to cir- 
ciety. The cumstances of emigration from Europe, conditions of the soil, 
Ne"^E^^ 1* d P^^i^^^^^ institutions, and religious beliefs. These types were the 

more marked, as there were no adequate means of communica- 
tion or routes of travel between the colonies. New England 
was inhabited by pure English stock, and retained for many 
generations its Puritan character. The early immigrants had 
come in congregations and settled in compact groups, making 
little self-governing towns clustered about the church, the school, 
and the village green. Learning was more carefully nurtured 
and widely diffused in New England than anywhere else in the 
colonies.-^ Before 1650 public-school instruction had been made 

1 The Puritan leade-rs of the New England settlements were highly educated 
men, who prized learning for the support it furnished to their independent re- 
ligious ideas. Where the interpretation of Scripture depended, as it did in the 
Puritan system, on one's own enlightened mind, universal education was a neces- 
sity. The Massachusetts legislature, which voted ;^4oo in 1636 " to found a col- 
lege at Newtowne" (Cambridge), was "the first body in which the people by ' 
their representatives ever gave their own money to found a place of education " 
(Quincy, History of Harvard University, Vol. II, p. 654). 



The English Colonies 



73 



compulsory in all New England except Rhode Island, in order 
" that learning," in the noble words of the Massachusetts stat- 
ute, '' might not be buried in the graves of the fathers." Har- 
vard College was established six years after Winthrop's landing, 
and " before the nightly howl of the wolf had ceased from the 
outskirts of their villages " the Massachusetts settlers had made 
provision whereby their young men might study the master 
minds of the world. The excellent Earl of Bellomont, coming 



'"TT-i^ 



'>^^^^ 










^. 



" " " ■ rn^-iint-TirTfr.^|rj J^^iPi; ,, ^ [.J ^S f^ f^ 

1^ JBi sea f!5 E w ' ^ ^ * ' M 1 Tj ^ |5E5 „ 

3s.&. _v '^ . 



® 




E 



>f 



''f^ 



Harvard College in 1726 

as royal governor to Massachusetts in 1700, wondered how so 
much learning could exist in the province side by^side with so 
much fanaticism. 

The stony soil and rigorous climate of New England made 84. The Ne-w 
the farmer's life a fit preparation for enduring the rough march chSacter 
or toiling on the rude fortifications against the Indians, whose 
war whoop so often interrupted his plowing and planting. 
The schools of bluefish, mackerel, and cod off the coast devel- 
oped a race of hardy fishermen in the seaport towns ; while 
the fleet sloops and cutters of the aristocratic merchants slipped 
by the customs patrol with the smugged goods of the Indies. 
Until the rise of a class of brilliant young lawyers like Otis and 



74 ^^^ Establishment of the English 

the Adamses, on the eve of the Revolutionary War, the clergy 
were the undisputed leaders of society. Education was entirely 
in their hands, and the magistrates were controlled by a public 
opinion largely inspired from the pulpits of the Puritan divines. 
With the virtues of soberness, industry, scrupulous conscien- 
tiousness, and a high standard of private and public morality, 
Puritanism also unfortunately developed narrowness, self-right- 
eousness, and unwholesome cultivation of the austere and joy- 
less sides of life. The first play that ventured to invite the 
applause of a New England audience, " The Orphan," enacted 
in a Boston coffeehouse in 1750, was prohibited as 'lending 
to discourage industry and frugality and greatly to increase im- 
piety." At the same time New York, Baltimore, and cities to the 
south were centers of gayety. 
85. Con- No greater contrast could be imagined than that of the hardy 

sented by'dif- old Puritan divine, Samuel Emery, preaching interminable ser- 

ferent types ^lons in the arctic cold of a Maine meetinghouse without seats, 
of colonial life 

windows, or plaster, on a salary of ^^45 a year, payable one half 

in farm truck and firewood, prepared every moment to seize his 
musket at the sound of the Indian war whoop, and fortified by 
inward grace against the still more redoubtable attacks of the 
tart tongues of " frightfully turbulent women " in his congrega- 
tion ; and the rich Carolina planter, wintering among the fashion- 
able throng at Charleston, sipping costly wines at gay suppers, 
handing richjy gowned women to their chariots with the grace 
of King Louis's courtiers, gaming, dueling, drinking, and re- 
mitting generous sums of his plantation profits to the son estab- 
lished in gentleman's quarters at Tory Oxford. Of course such 
a picture is not fair to the average life in the colonies, north 
and south. There were wealthy aristocrats among the Puritans 
of New England, as " Tory Row " in Cambridge testified ; and 
there were numerous settlers of hardy Huguenot and Scotch- 
Irish stock in Virginia and the Carolinas. Nevertheless, the 
contrast between New J^ngland and the colonies south of the 
Potomac was marked. 



The English Colonies 



75 



The rich soil of the South, with its staple crops of tobacco 86. Thepian- 
and rice, favored the plantation system and slave labor. Broad gouth^ °^ *^^ 
navigable rivers, reaching well up into the level lands, gave every 
planter his private wharf, and made the huge plantations re- 
semble feudal estates, with their stately manor houses domi- 
nating the stables, the storage sheds, and the clustering huts of 
the slave quarters. In Virginia, and perhaps to some extent in 
the Carolinas, these estates, by the laws of "primogeniture" and 














^^^ 



A Colonial Mansion in the South 



" entail," descended undivided to the eldest son of the family, 
while the younger sons either entered the ranks of the clergy 
and the professions of physicians and lawyers, or sometimes 
became shiftless dependents and rovers. 

A public-school system was impossible when the white popu- 
lation was so scattered that a planter needed a field glass to see 
his neighbor's house. The slaves might be taught the elements 
of religion by a conscientious mistress, but " book learning " 
was no part of their equipment for the rice swamps, the kitchen, 
or the hunting stables. On court days the squires and rustics 
gathered at the county center, making a holiday with racing 



87. Culture 
in the Soutb 



16 



The Establishment of the English 



88. The mid- 
dle colonies 



89. Why 
civilization 
developed 
slowly in the 
colonies 



90. Estab- 
lishment of a 
postal system 
in the colonies 



and speech making ; but the tense and steady political interest 
of the New England town meeting was unknown.-^ 

The settlements between the Hudson and the Potomac were 
"middle colonies " in character as well as in situation, — between 
the puritanical, democratic type of New England, and the urbane, 
aristocratic, hospitable society of the South, so tenacious of rank 
and tradition. Politically these middle colonies combined some 
features of both the township government of the North and the 
county government of the South. They were (as they still are) 
cosmopolitan in population, and the region was most attractive 
to foreign immigration. A Jesuit missionary of Canada passing 
through New Amsterdam in 1643 found eighteen languages 
spoken among its four hundred inhabitants, and noted an in- 
tense devotion to money making, which precluded much inter- 
est in education or religion. There were but two churches in 
the city when it was surrendered to the English in 1664. 

In lands so recently reclaimed from the virgin forest and the 
savage Indian as were the American colonies, the progress of 
civilization was naturally slow. As late as the outbreak of the 
Revolutionary War, John Dickinson of Tennsylvania could write, 
" Some few towns excepted, we are all tillers of the soil from 
Nova Scotia to West Florida." Still Benjamin Franklin, already 
high in the estimation of Europeans for his scientific discoveries, 
when founding the first American Philosophical Society (1743), 
wrote : '' The first drudgery of settling new colonies is pretty 
well over, and there were many in every colony in circumstances 
which set them at ease to cultivate the finer arts and improve 
the common stock of knowledge." 

An enterprising governor of New York, toward the end of the 
seventeenth century, started a monthly postal service between 
New York and Boston, over the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield 
route now followed by the railroad. In 1 7 1 o Parliament extended 

1 In Virginia local courts were developed early in the seventeenth century, 
but in South Carolina every magistrate was appointed in Charleston and every 
court held there. Of county or township government there was no trace until 
after the Civil War. 



The E72glish Colo7iies yy 

the British post office to America, with headquarters at New York, 
and routes reaching from the Maine border on the north to Wil- 
liamsburg, the capital of Virginia, on the south. Later Benjamin 
Franklin was for many years postmaster-general of the colonies, 
and administered the office with great skill. 

Public schools existed from the first in New England, as we 91. Educa- 
have seen, but were not established in the middle and southern cXnies 
colonies until the eighteenth century. For over half a century 
Harvard was the only college in America; then followed William 
and Mary in Virginia (1693), Yale in Connecticut (1701), Prince- 
ton in New Jersey (1746), Philadelphia (now the University of 
Pennsylvania) (1749), King's (now Columbia) in New York 
(1754), Rhode Island (now Brown University) (i 764). The first 
medical treatise in America was published by Thomas Thacher 
in Boston in 1678, '' to guide the common people of New Eng- 
land how to order themselves and theirs in the Small Pocks or 
Measels." But it was a full century before the first medical 
school was opened in Philadelphia, with lectures in anatomy, 
botany, and Lavoisier's discoveries in chemistry. Even then 
the science of medicine was crude and clumsy beyond belief. 
George Washington's life was sacrificed to medical ignorance in 
1799. He was " bled " three times by the leeches, and then, after 
the loss of two quarts of blood, was '' dosed to nausea and blis- 
tered to rawness." Even his stout constitution could not stand 
the heroic treatment. His secretary wrote sadly : '' Every medical 
assistance was offered, but without the desired result." 

In 1638 the first font of type was brought from England, 92. Printing 
and in 1640 the Book of Psalms in meter (the old " Bay Psalm ^ewsplpe°rt 
Book ") was printed in Boston, — the first book printed in 
America north of the city of Mexico. On September 26, 1690, 
the first newspaper in America, Publick Occurrences both For- 
eign and Domestic^ appeared in Boston ; but it was promptly 
suppressed by the government '' under high resentment." How- 
ever, in 1704 the Boston News-Letter had a kinder reception 
by the authorities, and became the first permanent newspaper. 



yS The Establishment of the English 

Within the next half century all the colonies except New Jersey, 
Delaware, and Georgia had Gazettes or Chmnicles, and there 
were three or four respectable periodicals. But few books were 
produced in the colonies. The educated depended on England 
for their scientific works, and read with avidity the ponderous 
novels of the eighteenth century. The colonial presses were 
chiefly devoted to sermons and political " broadsides." 

The Bofton News-Letter. 



#ttblitl)eii b^ Tlntf^oiitv^ 



From S^Ontia^ April 17. to ^QtlM^ April 24. 1704. 

• Lon^ tljing-'Viifl from Dtcemb. %d. to 4»i. 170;. 1 From all this he infers, That they have hopes of 

A-ffiftancc from Fmnce^ otherwife they would never 

LEners from Scotlnnd bring us the Copy of 1 be fo impudent , and he gives Reafons for his Ap- 
aSheet lately Printed there, Intituled, A I prehcnfions that the Frtmb King may fcn^ Troops 
fcAfonablt Alarm for Scotl^n^. In a Letter- thither this Winter, I. Becaufe the Cng/i/fc 6oDwcA 
. from nCentleman in the City,tB his Friend in- will not then be at Sea to oppofe them. a. He cau 
the Country^ concerning the ffeftnt Danger then bcft fpare them, the Seafon of AiSlion beyond 
^ the KJ.ngdor!t and'ef tlx Proteftnnt Religion. Sea being over. ;. TheExpcdation given him of a 

This Letter tales Notice, That Papifts fwarm in confiderable number to joyn.tiiem, may incourage 
that iiation, that they traffiek more avowedly than him to the undertaking with fewer Men,if he cart 
formerly, and thai of late many Scores of Priefts & but fend over a fufticient number of Officers with 
Jefuires arc come ihithcr from France, and gone to Arms and Ammunition. 

the North, to the Highlands & other places of the He endeavours in the reft of his Letters to an* 
Country. That the Minifters of the Highlands and fwer the fooltfli Pretences of the Preten'ders being 
Morth gave in large Lifts of them to the Commit- a Proteftant and that he \)vill govern Us according 
tee of the General Aflembly, to be laid before the to Law. He Taysahcit being bred up in the Reli- 
Privy'Council. gion and Politicks of fr^ncf, he is by Education a 

Facsimile of the Earliest Successful Newspaper in America 

93. The free- In 1734 a poor New York printer named Peter Zenger was 
f^Jlinli- tried for " seditious libel " in speaking freely of the government, 
cated, 1734 He was defended by the aged Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, 
the ablest lawyer in the colonies, who came to offer his services 
gratis in a cause which he rightly deemed of the utmost impor- 
tance. "It is not the case of a poor printer nor of New York 
'alone," he said in his fine plea. " No ! it may in its consequences 
affect every freeman that lives under a British government in the 
main [land] of America, securing to ourselves and our posterity 
the liberty both of exposing and opposing arbitrary power by 
speaking and writing the truth." Hamilton won his case, and the 
freedom of the press was thus early vindicated in our history. 



sentiment in 
the colonies 



The English Colonies 79 

The observant Swedish traveler Kalm, visiting America in 94. Lack of 
1750, was astonished at the isolation of the colonies from one ^a^ntince in 
another, and it is said that the delegates who met from nine of *^^ colonies 
them in a congress at New York fifteen years later regarded 
each other " like ambassadors from foreign nations, strange in 
face and action." It is not to be wondered at that the colonies 
knew little of 9ne another in days when travel by stage, sloop, 
or saddle was laborious and expensive ; nor that little love was 
lost between them when boundaries were constantly in dispute 
on account of the reckless grants of the Stuart charters, and 
when jealousies were rife over the appropriations of men and 
money for Indian defense. 

Yet, for all the diversity of type and disunion of sentiment 95. Factors 
in the colonies, there were some very fundamental bonds of f^runity^of^ 
union between them. They were all predominantly of English 
blood, with the inheritance of the English traditions of self- 
government. Popular assemblies insisted on the control of the 
public purse in every colony from New Hampshire to Georgia. 
The common law of England was universal. Trial by jury, lib- 
erty of speech and of the press, freedom from standing armies, 
absence of oppressive land taxes, — in short, the rights and 
privileges for which free-born Englishmen had contended from 
the days of Magna Carta to the overthrow of the Stuarts, — 
were possessed and prized by all the colonies. And when these 
guarantees of liberty were invaded by a headstrong king and a 
heedless Parliament, the people of the colonies forgot that they 
were Virginians or New Englanders, Episcopalians or Puritans, 
planters, traders, farmers, or fishermen, in the prouder, deeper 
consciousness that they were freemen. 



REFERENCES 

The Old Dominion : L. G. Tyler, N'arratives of Early Virginia, 1606- 
162^ (Original Narratives of Early American History) ; John Fiske, 
Old Virginia and her Neighbors ; JusTiN WiNSOR, Narrative and Crit- 
ical History of America, Vol. Ill, chap, v ,* C. M. Andrews, Colonial 



8o The Establishment of the English 

Self- Government (American Nation Series), chaps, xiii, xiv; L. G. 
Tyler, England in America (American Nation Series), chaps, iii-vi ; 
Edw. Channing, History of the Uttited States, Vol. I, pp. 143-236 ; 
J. A. Doyle, English Colonies in America, Vol. I, chaps, vi-ix. 

The New England Settlements: Channing, Vol. I, chaps, x-xv; 
Vol. II, chaps, vi, vii; Fiske, The Beginnings of New England; Doyle, 
Vols. II and III ; Winsor, Vol. Ill, chaps, viii, ix ; Tyler (Am. Nation), 
chaps, ix-xix ; Andrews, chaps, iii, iv, xvi, xvii ; W. T. Davis, B7'ad- 
ford's Histoiy of Plymouth (Orig. Narr.) ; J. K. Hosmer, Winthrop's 
Joiirjial (Orig, Narr.) ; A. B, Hart, American Histoiy told by Cojitem- 
poraries. Vol. I, Nos. 90-149, 

The Proprietary Colonies : Doyle, Vol, I, chaps, x-xii ; Vol. IV, chaps, 
i-vii ; J. F. Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland (Orig. Narr.) ; Fiske, 
Old Virginia and her Neighbors, chaps, viii, ix, xiii, xiv ; The Dutch arid 
Quaker Colonies in America ; Channing, Vol. I, chaps, xvi-xviii ; Vol. 

II, chaps, ii, iv, xi, xii ; Tyler (Am. Nation), chaps, vii, viii ; Andrews, 
chaps, v-xii, xv-xix ; H. L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Sev- 
enteenth Century, Vol. II; Hart, Vol. I, Nos. 153-172; Winsor, Vol. 

III, chaps, x-xiii; Vol. V, chaps, iii-vi. 

The Colonies in the Eighteenth Century : Doyle, Vol, V ; E. B. Greene, 
Provincial America (Am. Nation), chaps, i-vi, xi-xviii ; R, G, Thwaites, 
The Colonies, pp, 265 ff, ; Hart, Vol, II, Nos. 1-108 ; Channing, Vol. 
II, chaps, xiii-xvii ; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. VII, chap, ii; 
G. L. Beer, The Commercial Policy of England toward the American 
Colonies. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. Bacon's Rebellion : Fiske, Old Virginia, Vol. II, pp. 58-107 ; Hart, 
Vol. I, No. 70 ; Andrews, pp. 21 5-231 ; Osgood, Vol. Ill, pp. 258-278. 

2. The Pilgrims in England and Holland : M. Dexter, The Stoiy of the 
Pilgrims, pp. 1-150; Channing, Vol. I, pp. 293-304; Hart, Vol. I, 
Nos. 49, 55, 97-104 ; W. E. Griffis, The Pilgrims in their Three Homes. 

3. Dutch New York: Winsor, Vol. IV, pp. 395-409; Channing, 
Vol. I, pp, 438-483; Hart, Vol, I, Nos, 150-155; Fiske, Dutch and 
Quaker Colonies, Vol, I, pp, 158-188. 

4. William Penn : Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colojties, Vol. II, pp. 
109-139 ; Winsor, Vol. Ill, pp. 469-495 ; Channing, Vol. II, pp. 94- 
126; Doyle, Vol. IV, pp. 379-403 ; Old South Leaflets, Nos. 75, 171. 

5. Religion in New England: Winsor, Vol. II, pp. 219-24^^ Doyle, 
Vol. II, pp. 85-120 ; Vol, V, pp, 166-193 ; Osgood, Vol, I, pp, 200-221 ; 
Old South Leaflets, No. 55. 



CHAPTER III 

THE STRUGGLE WITH FRANCE FOR NORTH AMERICA 

The Rise of New France 

Three centuries ago the kings of Europe regarded as their 96. European 
own private property any distant lands or islands that mariners T'"^^ '''■ 

• .-I • • • 1 i« Aiii6riC3. in 

in their service might discover ; and they granted these lands ^^® seven- 
to settlers and trading companies with little regard for each ^''^^^ ''^^"'y 
other's claims. We have mentioned how immense tracts of land 
in America, extending from sea to sea, were given away by the 
Stuart kings, on the ground that John Cabot's discovery of the 
mainland of America in 1497 gave the New World to England. 
The States-General (parliament) of the Netherlands in 1621 
granted to the Dutch West India Company exclusive privileges 
of trade " on the east coast of America from Newfoundland to 
the Strait of Magellan." Seven years later Richelieu, the pow- 
erful cardinal-minister who ruled the ruler of France, granted 
to the '' Hundred Associates of Canada territory and trading 
rights, extending along the Atlantic coast from Florida to the 
Arctic circle." Even Sweden entered the ranks of the world- 
colonizing powers in 1632, with a charter to a company "for 
trade and settlement on the coasts of America, Africa, and Asia." 
The actual results of these ambitious plans were meager enough. 
The Swedes maintained their tiny posts on the Delaware River 
for less than twenty years, and the Dutch held the banks of the 
Hudson for about fifty years. Besides the English, only the 
French came anywhere near making good, by settlement or ex- 
ploration, their vast claims to territory in North America. With 
the French the English had to fight for the possession of the 
St. Lawrence, the Ohio, and the Mississippi valleys. 

Si 



82 



The Establishment of the English 



The French were early in the field of American exploration. 
Their traditions tell of the discovery of distant western shores 
by sailors of Dieppe more than a century before Columbus's 
birth. At any rate, the fishing vessels of the Norman and Breton 
sea dogs were looming through the Newfoundland fogs soon 
after Columbus's death ; and Verrazano had sailed the Atlantic 
coast from Florida to Nova Scotia for the French king sixty 



98. Cartier on 
the St. Law- 
rence, 1534- 
1535 




Joliet's Map (from Winsor's '' Cartier to Frontenac") 

years before Sir Walter Raleigh opened the epoch of English 
settlement in Virginia. A long list of French names represent 
settlements attempted in Brazil, Carolina, Newfoundland, and 
Nova Scotia (Acadia) during the sixteenth century ; but the only 
real discoverer among these French adventurers was Jacques 
Cartier, of St. Malo in Brittany. 

In 1534 Cartier sailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and 
on his next voyage (1535) discovered the broad mouth of the 
river. He made his way up the St. Lawrence, stopping to barter 



The Struggle with Fr-ance for North America 83 



for furs at Indian villages on the magnificent sites where the 
cities of Quebec and Montreal now stand. Just beyond Mon- 
treal the way to the China Sea (the hope held out by every 
westward-reaching river or creek) was barred by the rapids 
whose name, Lachine ('' China "), still tells of Cartier's disap- 
pointment in not reaching the East Indies. For several years 
Cartier labored in vain to establish a colony on the St. Lawrence, 

and one year his men actually 
wintered there. But the noble . 
river of Canada was destined, 
like the lowlands of Virginia, 
to wait until the opening of a 
new century before its savage 
tribes were disturbed by the 
permanent presence of Euro- 
peans. 

The man who founded the 99. cham- 
T^ 1 • ' r^ y r\ plain founds 

l^rench empire m Canada, the Quebec (1608) 

'' Father of New France," was ^°^ ^^^^f 
' enemies of 

Samuel de Champlain. Trained the Iroquois 
navigator, scientific student,^ 
intrepid explorer, earnest mis- 
sionary, unwearied advocate of 
French expansion in the New 
World, Champlain established a 
trading post on the mighty rock of Quebec in 1608. The little 
colony, like the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth twelve years 
later, barely survived its first winter. But an unfortunate cir- 
cumstance in the summer of 1609 proved more disastrous to 
the French rule in America than many starving winters. Cham- 
plain was induced by the Algonquin Indians along the river 

1 About 1870 a farmer turned up a brass astrolabe near the Ottawa River 
bearing the mark " Paris, 1603." There can be no doubt that it was Champlain's. 
In 1600, while on a visit to the Spanish West Indies, Champlain had suggested 
the great advantage to commerce which would result from digging a canal through 
the Isthmus of Panama. 




Champlain's Astrolabe 



84 



The Establishment of the English 



100. French 
ideas of colo- 
nization 



to join them in an attack on their old enemies, the Iroquois, 
whose confederation of five powerful tribes stretched from 
the upper Hudson to Lake Erie. The expedition led Cham- 
plain's canoes into the sapphire waters of the Lake of the Iro- 
quois, which now bears his name. A single volley from the 
French guns put to flight the astounded Indians gathered on 
the shore of the lake ; but Champlain little dreamed of the far- 
reaching effect of those few shots that startled the virgin forest 
of the Lake of the Iroquois. On that very July day of 1609 
Henry Hudson was off the New England coast on his way to 
discover the river which was to take 
him up to within a few miles of the 
Lake. The defeat of the Iroquois by 
Champlain made that powerful league 
of tribes the allies of the Dutch (and 
later of the English) on the Hudson, 
and not of the French on the St. Law- 
rence. They massacred the French 
missionaries and exterminated the tribes 
that listened to their preaching. Their 
enmity forced the French explorers and 
traders to seek the interior of America by routes to the north 
of the Great Lakes ; and the terror which their name spread 
westward even to the Mississippi kept the Ohio valley from ever 
being a safe highway of commerce between the French posses- 
sions in Canada and in Louisiana (the Mississippi Valley). 

Had the French controlled the Ohio valley and the southern 
shores of Lakes Erie and Ontario, as they would undoubtedly 
have done with the Iroquois as allies, it is extremely likely that 
they would have succeeded in their long struggle to confine 
the English within the narrow strip of land between the Alle- 
gheny Mountains and the Atlantic. Then the vast continent of 
America above the Gulf of Mexico would have developed under 
French instead of English institutions. What the French ideas 
of colonization were we see in the regulations made by Richelieu 




Champlain Tercentenary 
Medal 



The Struggle with France for North America 85 

in 1627 to 1628 for the Hundred Associates of New France, and 
by the ministers of Louis XIV, when the colony became a prov- 
ince of the crown in 1663. None but Frenchmen and Roman 
Catholics were allowed in the colony. The land was all in the 
hands of great proprietors, who rented strips for cultivation 
along the river banks, in exchange for labor on their big estates 
or payment in produce. The government was administered by 
the officers of the company or the crown, without the direction 
or even the advice of any representative assembly. There was 
no local government. Justice was dispensed by the magistrates 
without trial by jury. 

The self-rule which was practically enjoyed by every English loi. The 
colony on the Atlantic seaboard was unknown in Canada. In ru^ie*" oTthe 
its place there prevailed the system known as ** paternalism," French in 
which treated the inhabitants of the dolony like irresponsible 
children under the firm, paternal hand of its governors. They 
were directed by the government not only what taxes to pay, 
with what ports to trade, what laws to obey, what worship to 
perform, but what tools to use, what seeds to plant, at what age 
to marry, and how large families to bring up. This absolute and 
paternal rule, while it promoted military efficiency, did not at- 
tract colonists. In spite of lavish expenditures by the king, the 
colony did not flourish. During the seventeenth century the Eng- 
lish population along the Atlantic coast grew to four hundred 
thousand, while the French in Canada barely reached eighteen 
thousand. The three chief posts of Quebec, Three Rivers, and 
Montreal were strung along the St. Lawrence at intervals of 
ninety miles. The sparseness of population permitted agricul- 
ture to be carried on only in the neighborhood of the ports 
which served to protect the settlers from the Indians. 

Westward through the St. Lawrence valley and along the 102. The 
shores of the Great Lakes roamed the hunters and trappers joii^"^^ 
and fur traders, the wood-rangers {coiireurs de hois) who defied 
the trading laws of the king's governor at Quebec. These wild 
Frenchmen often sacrificed their native tongue, their religion, 



86 



The Establishment of the English 



even their very civilization itself, and joined the aboriginal Ameri- 
can tribes, marrying Indian squaws, eating boiled dog and mush, 
daubing their naked bodies with greasy war paint, and leading 
the hideous dance or the murderous raid. 

The Catholic priests played a part in New France quite as 
important as that of the Puritan ministers in New England. 
New France 'pj^g Jesuits, a strict religious order inflamed with unquenchable 
missionary zeal for the conversion of the Indians, came to the 



103. The 

Jesuit mis- 
sionaries in 




(h-A-I\(\\^{\i^'^M{^^ 



\ 










'^. 




An Early French Fort in Canada 

colony in its earliest years. In 1634 they were the pioneers to 
the savage lands of the Hurons about Georgian Bay, and during 
the whole of the seventeenth century they kept side by side with 
the explorer and the trader in their march westward. They have 
left us an account of their triumphs and martyrdoms in a series 
of annual reports sent home to the superior of their order in 
France during the years 1632 to 1675. These ''Jesuit Rela- 
tions " have recently been edited in over seventy volumes by a 
distinguished American scholar. They form one of the most 
valuable sources for the study of the French in America. 

Champlain had advocated westward expansion. He himself 
discovered Lakes Ontario and Huron and explored the Ottawa 




LA SALLE TAKING POSSESSION OF LOUISIANA 



The Struggle with France for North America 8/ 

valley. He sent Jean Nicolet as far as the outlet of Lake 104. French 
Superior in 1634. A generation of explorers and traders fol- the Great ^'^ 
lowed in Nicolet's footsteps, penetrating the western wildernesses ^t^^^l 
to the upper waters of the Mississippi, and even reaching the 
frozen shores of Hudson Bay. In 167 1 St. Lusson, standing at 
Sault Ste. Marie, where the emerald flood of Lake Superior 
rushes to join the darker waters of Lake Huron, took posses- 
sion, with great pomp and pageant, of the vast Northwest for 
his sovereign king, Louis XIV. 

Already Robert Cavalier, the Sieur de la Salle, who was to 105. LaSaiie 
repeat St. Lusson's ceremony eleven years later at the mouth g?eatMissis- 
of the Mississippi, and so complete the dominion of France sippivaiiey 
from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, was pushing his way 1670-1682 
down the Ohio valley to reach the " Big Water " {Alich sipt) 
which the Indians said flowed southward for innumerable days. 
La Salle was a French nobleman, cultured, aristocratic, domi- 
neering ; yet he sacrificed wealth and ease, bore with marvelous 
patience repeated and overwhelming misfortunes, endured physi- 
cal hardship and forest travel which exhausted even his Indian 
guides, that he might accomplish his single purpose of extending 
the name and power of France in the New World. He labored 
twelve years in the face of jealousy and detraction at home, 
treachery in his own ranks, bankruptcy, shipwreck, and mas- 
sacre, before he actually guided his canoes out of the Illinois 
into the long-desired stream of the Mississippi (February 6, 
1682). The Jesuit priest Marquette and the trader Joliet had 
anticipated him by nine years, sailing down the great river as 
far as the mouth of the Arkansas, but returning when they had 
satisfied themselves that the river flowed into the Gulf of Mexico 
instead of the western sea. La Salle, however, was stimulated 
by a greater purpose than the discovery of a passage to China. 
He was adding a continent to the dominion of France. He 
planted the lilies of France on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico 
(April 9, 1682), naming the huge valley of the Mississippi 
" Louisiana " in honor of his sovereign, Louis XIV. 




4lil^ 



French Explorations on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi 
88 



The Struggle with France for North America 89 

La Salle himself did not live to develop and govern the new 106. cham- 
domain of Louisiana.^ But the line of posts down the Illinois l^^^iie' and 
and the Mississippi, which united the French possessions in Frontenacthe 

^ 1 IT-- ir-o. r ^ , builders of 

Canada and Louisiana ; the fortification of Detroit (1701), with New France 
its control of Lake Erie and the portages to the Ohio tributaries ; 
the prosperous colony of seven thousand inhabitants in the lower 
Mississippi Valley, which grew up with New Orleans (founded 
1 7 18) as its capital, — all were the outcome of La Salle's vast 
labors. If Champlain was the father of New PYance, La Salle 
was its elder brother. These two, together with the energetic, far- 
seeing governor of Canada, the Count Frontenac (167 2-1 68 2, 
reappointed 1 689-1 698), form the trio who created the French 
power in the New World, and whose plan of empire building, 
had it not been thwarted by the narrow and bigoted policy of 
the court of Versailles, might have made not only the St. Law- 
rence and Mississippi valleys but all of America above the 
tropics an -enduring colony of France. 

The English colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, occupied with 107. The 
their own problems of developing their agricultural resources, ^o"a?tind°iifeI- 
building up their commerce, defending their precious rights of ent to the 

self-government against king and proprietor, were slow to realize explorations 
1 • • r 1 T- 1 1-1 T ,. ill the West 

the serious meaning 01 the rrench power which was gradually 

surrounding them in a long chain of posts from the mouth of 
the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi. Though by 
their charters several of the colonies extended to the Pacific, the 
Allegheny Mountains, only a few score miles from the Adantic 
coast, actually formed a western boundary which the colonists 
were over a century in reaching, and another half century in 
crossing. When the Virginians were still defending their tide- 
swept peninsulas against the Susquehannock Indians, and the 
Carolinians were laying the foundations of their fii^t city, what 
the French fur traders, missionaries, and explorers were doing 

1 Returning to the New World from a visit to France, La Salle missed the 
mouth of the Mississippi and landed, perilously near being shipwrecked, on the 
Texan coast by Matagorda. He was treacherously assassinated by some of his 
own party while trying to reach Louisiana through swampland jungle, 1684. 



go The Establishment of the Eftglish 

at the head of the Great Lakes or along the Mississippi seemed 
too remote for notice. 

108. Rivalry There were only three exceptions to this general indifference 
Bay region of the English colonies to the progress of the French in America 
and Acadia -^ ^^^ seventeenth century. In 1670 Charles II granted to a 

number of courtiers and merchants the region about Hudson 
Bay, whose harbors made fine depots for the Far Western fur 
trade. The French had already established fortified posts on the 
bay, and for forty years contested the region with the English. 
Again, Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia), the oldest permanent 
French settlement in the New World (1604), was repeatedly 
attacked by the English, on the ground that it lay within the 
bounds of the Virginia and New England charters. From 16 13 
to 1 7 10 no less than seven expeditions were sent against this 
Acadian stronghold. The fighting around Hudson Bay and the 
Acadian peninsula, however, was of slight importance for the 
possession of America when compared with the mighty struggle 
for the region between the upper Hudson and the St. Lawrence. 

109. Critical New York differed from the other English colonies in several 
New York important respects. It was not settled by the English, but was 

conquered by them from the Dutch. Its character as a despoti- 
cally governed trading colony was already formed. It was the 
only English colony that lacked a popular assembly under the 
Stuart dynasty.-^ It was the only one not protected in the rear 
by the wall of the Alleghenies, and hence the only one that had 
direct and easy communication with the Iroquois south of the 
Great Lakes, and with the French on the St. Lawrence. Further- 
more, only the year before the Duke of York's fleet took New 
Netherland from the Dutch, Louis XIV, just come of age, had 
taken the colony of New France into his own hands (1663). 
His able minister, Colbert, reorganized the government, secur- 
ing bounties for trade and large loans and gifts of money and 
stores from the king for the French colonies in Canada, the West 

1 Except for the years 1683 to 16S5, when the Duke of York allowed his gov 
ernor, Dongan, to convene an assembly. 



The Struggle with Fraiice for North America 91 

Indies, South America, and Africa. A royal governor was sent 
to Canada, together with a military commander and a regiment 
of twelve hundred veterans of the European wars. The French 
frontier was pushed down to Lake Champlain, and the new 
governor was on his way south with five hundred men to chas- 
tise the Iroquois, when he heard that the English had seized the 
Hudson. He " returned in great sylence and dilligence toward 
Canada, declaring that the king of England did grasp at all 
America." Still the commander wrote home to Colbert that it 
was necessary for the French to have New York. It would give 
them an ice-free entrance to Canada by the Hudson valley, 
would break up the English alliance with the Iroquois, and 
would divide the English colonies in America into a northern 
and a southern group. Under these circumstances it was not 
strange that New York should be the colony most concerned 
about the growth of the French power, and that it should be 
Dongan, the Duke of York's governor, who first urged upon his 
countrymen that to have the French " running all along from 
our lakes by the back of Virginia and Carolina to the Bay of 
Mexico " might be " very inconvenient to the English" (1683). 

So long as the Stuarts occupied the English throne, however, 110. The ac- 
their governors in New York or in any other American colony uam of Orange 
received little support against the French. The royal brothers, ^"°^^ °° ^^^ 

Charles II and James II, who basely accepted millions of pounds France and 

, . . ^ . ^^-.^^ , ^ , , . England, 1689 

from their cousin Louis XIV of 1* ranee to combat their own 

parliaments in England, could not with very good grace attack 
King Louis's governors in America. But with the expulsion 
of the Stuarts and the accession of William of Orange to the 
English throne, in 1689, a great change came, William had for 
years been the deadly enemy of Louis XIV on account of the 
latter's shameful attack on the Netherlands in 1672.^ More- 
over, William, as the leading Protestant prince of Europe, was 

1 William of Orange, when he was invited to the English throne in 1688, was 
serving his seventeenth year as Stadtholder (or President) of the Dutch Repub- 
lic (the northern provinces of the Netherlands). 



92 The Establishment of the English 

the champion of the reformed religion, which Louis was strain- 
ing every nerve to overthrow. England, in a wave of national 
enthusiasm, rallied to William's support against the absolute 
power of France. A mighty struggle began between the two 
countries for the colonial and commercial supremacy of the world. 
In the century and a quarter that intervened between William's 
accession and the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo (1815), Eng- 
land and France fought seven wars, filling sixty years and cover- 
ing lands and oceans from the forests of western Pennsylvania 
to the jungles of India,- and from the Caribbean Sea to the 
mouth of the Nile. 

The Fall of New France 

111. Indian Louis XIV's governor in Canada, the wily old Count Fron- 
Engiish^ron-^ tenac, was only waiting for an excuse to attack the English 

tiers, 1689- settlements in New England and New York. On learning of 
1698 

the outbreak of war between France and England (1689) he 

sent his bands of Indian allies against the frontier towns to pil- 
lage, burn, and massacre. Dover, in the present state of New 
Hampshire, and Schenectady, in the Mohawk valley. New 
York, were the scenes of frightful Indian atrocities. Even the 
conclusion of peace between the courts of London and Paris in 
1697, and the death of Frontenac in the next year, brought 
only a lull in these savage raids. 
112. The In 1 701 a new war broke out between the two great rival 

utrecht° 1713 powers. Louis XIV, in defiance of all Europe, set his grandson 
on the vacant throne of Madrid, thinking by the combined 
strength of France and Spain to crush out Protestantism entirely, 
to control the wealth of the New World, to destroy England's 
colonial empire and sweep her fleets from the ocean. The French 
king failed in his ambitious plans. After repeated defeats at the 
hands of Queen Anne's great general, the Duke of Marlborough,^ 

1 King William III died in 1702, and was succeeded by his sister-in-law, Anne, 
a Protestant daughter of James IL With England in this War of the Spanish 
Succession were allied Holland, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire. 



The Struggle tvith Fi-aiice for North America 93 

he was forced to conclude the humiliating treaty of Utrecht 
(17 13), which made England the foremost maritime power of 
the world. ^ By the clauses of the treaty that referred to the 
New World, France surrendered to England the territories of 
Acadia (Nova Scotia), Newfoundland, and Hudson Bay, States- 
men in America urged that England should demand the whole 
St. Lawrence valley and free the colonies once for all from the 
danger of the French and Indians on the north. But the mother 
country was content for the moment to get a clear title to re- 
gions which had been in dispute for a hundred years, and to 
secure the undisputed control of the Iroquois tribes in western 
New York. The French were destined to hold the great rivers 
of Canada for half a century more. 

The treaty of Utrecht was only a truce, after all, as far as 113. The 
America was concerned, for it decided nothing as to the pos- waipoi^and 
session of the vast territory west of the Alleghenies. But the F^euri, 1715- 
truce was kept for many years, on account of the death of the 
ambitious Louis XIV (17 15) and the rise to power of the peace- 
fully disposed ministers, Robert Walpole in England and Cardi- 
nal Fleuri in France. Till the middle of the eighteenth century, 
though Indian raids on the frontiers, promoted by the French, 
occurred at frequent intervals, only one real French war (King 
George's War, 1 744-1 748) disturbed the colonies." A glorious 
exploit of the colonial troops in this war was the capture in 
1745 of the imposing fortress of Louisburg on Cape Breton 
Island, guarding the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Colonel Wil- 
liam Pepperell of New Hampshire was in command of the ex- 
pedition, and his army consisted almost wholly of troops voted 
by the New England legislatures. The restoration of the fortress 

1 For the full terms of the treaty of Utrecht, with map, see Robinson and 
Beard, Development of Modern Europe, Vol. I, pp. 42-44. 

2 The names and dates of the actual French wars from the accession of Wil- 
liam III to the middle of the eighteenth century were King William's War 
(1689-1697), Queen Anne's War (1702-1713), and King George's War (1744- 
1748). They were all parts of general European conflicts (see Robinson and 
Beard, Development of Modern Europe, Vol. I, pp. 28-33, 42-44, 60-68). 



94 



TJie Establishment of the English 



114. The 
English colo- 
nies wake to 
the danger 
from the 
French, v]oo- 
1750 



115. French 
advances in 
the eight- 
eenth century 



to France in the peace of 1748 created bitter feeling in the 
breasts of the New England yeomen, who thought that the 
mother country underrated their sacrifices and courage. 

During the first half of the eighteenth century the English 
colonies grew more and more alive to the serious menace of the 
French occupation of the land beyond the mountains. The 
danger, which in the seventeenth century had seemed to threaten 
only the New England and the New York frontiers, extended 
to the far south when the French governors of Louisiana warned 
English sailors away from the mouth of the Mississippi (1699) 
and the Spaniards instigated the Cherokee and Yamassee Indi- 
ans against the Carolinas (1702). From Acadia to Florida came 
voices of entreaty to the English court. Governor Bellomont of 
New York urged the establishment of a line of posts along the 
northern frontier, since " to pursue the Indians again and again 
to the forests was as useless as chasing birds." From Governor 
Keith of Pennsylvania came the request (17 21) " to fortify the 
passes on the back of Virginia," and build forts on the Lakes 
" to interrupt the PYench." Governor Burnet of New York 
actually fortified Oswego on Lake Ontario at his own ^expense 
(1727). A few years earlier Spotswood, the gallant governor 
of Virginia, had led a party of riders to the crest of the Blue 
Ridge, where, overlooking the beautiful Shenandoah valley, 
they drank the healths of the king and the royal household in 
costly wines and '^ fired a volley " after each bumper. From 
the Carolinas came anxious complaints about the new and grow- 
ing colony of '' Luciana [Louisiana] in Mississippi." And soon 
afterwards Oglethorpe's colony of Georgia was planted as a 
buffer state against the Spaniards in Florida and the French 
in the West Indies. 

The French too were active. They built forts at Crown Point 
and Niagara, put armed vessels on Lake Champlain, occupied 
Detroit for the control of Lake Erie and the portages to the 
Ohio streams, increased their posts along the Mississippi, and 
pushed forward the settlement of Louisiana. 



The Struggle zviih Frajice for North America 95 



Both sides were waiting for the event which was to strike the 
spark of war. That event came when the French and the Eng- 
lish at the same moment moved to seize the Ohio valley, — the 
French hoping to pen up the English colonies in the narrow 
strip of land east of the Alleghenies ; the English to get elbow- 
room beyond the mountains 



?;4^SfiWl|i!siM^ and control the routes to the 
lA^r.C;.^l«fc«W''.v,fll'( Mississippi. As Celoron de 
Bienville dropped down the 
Ohio (1749), nailing signs to 
the trees and burying lead 
plates by the river banks, pro- 
claiming the land to be the do- 
main of Louis XV of France, 
and Christopher Gist followed 
in his track (1750), selecting 
sites for the settlements of the 
Ohio Company of Virginia, 
they were the advance heralds 
of the struggle between France 
and England, not only for the 
valley of the Ohio but for the 
possession of the continent of 
North America. 

The two powers brought 

thus face to face to contend 

One of Celoron de Bienville's Lead for the mastery of America 

Plates, found on the Banks of the differed from each other in 

Ohio ^ ™, 

every respect. Ihe one was 

Roman Catholic in religion, absolute in government, a peo- 
ple of magnificent but impracticable colonial enterprises ; the 
other a Protestant, self-governing people, strongly attached to 
their homes, steadily developing compact communities. There 
was not a printing press or a public school in Canada, and plow 
and harrow were rarer than canoe and musket. The 80,000 



116. The 
Ohio valley 
the scene of 
the crisis 




117. Com- 
parison of the 
French and 
English colo- 
nies at the 
outbreak of 
the great war, 
1754 



96 The Establishment of the English 

inhabitants of New France were overwhelmingly outnumbered 
by the 1,300,000 English colonists. But two facts compensated 
the French for their inferiority in numbers : first, by their forti- 
fied positions along the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes and 
at the head of the Ohio valley, they compelled the English, if 
they wished to pass the Alleghenies, to fight on French ground ; 
secondly, the unified absolute government of New France en- 
abled her to move all her forces quickly under a single com- 
mand, whereas the English colonies, acting, as Governor Shirley 
of Massachusetts complained, ^^ like discordant semirepublics," 
either insisted on dictating the disposition and command of the 
troops which they furnished, or long refused, like New Jersey 
and the colonies south of Virginia, to furnish any troops at all. 
To make matters worse, the generals sent over from England, 
with few exceptions, despised the colonial troops and snubbed 
their officers. 
118. The Farseeing men like Governors Dinwiddle of Virginia and 

of coiwiiai Shirley of Massachusetts tried to effect some sort of union of 
union, 1754 ^j^g colonies in the face of the imminent danger from the French. 
The very summer that the first shots of the war were fired (1754) 
a congress was sitting at Albany for the discussion of better 
intercolonial relations and the cementing of the Iroquois alli- 
ance. At that congress Benjamin Franklin, the foremost man 
in the colonies, proposed the scheme of union known as the 
Albany Plan. A grand council consisting of representatives from 
each colony was to meet annually, to regulate Indian affairs, 
maintain a colonial army, control public lands, pass laws affect- 
ing the general good of the colonies, and levy taxes for the 
expenses of common undertakings. A president general chosen 
by the king was to have the executive powers of appointing 
high officials and of nominating the military commanders. He 
might also veto the acts of the council. Franklin's wise plan,, 
however, found favor neither with the colonial legislatures nor] 
with the royal governors. To each of them it seemed a sacrifice 
of their rightful authority ; so the colonies were left without a 



The Struggle with France for North America 97 

central directing power, to cooperate or not with the king's 

officers, as selfish interests prompted. 

The opening act of the contest for the Ohio valley is of 119. George 

special interest as introducing George Washington on the stage ^bassy tT'^ 

of American history. When the French began to construct a ^^^Fj®°^^', 
■' ° and the battle 

chain of forts to connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River, Gov- of Great 

-TA- • 1 T r -«T- • • \-n ^ • i i MCadOWS, 

ernor Dmwiddie 01 Virgmia sent Washmgton, who was then a 1753-1754 
stalwart young surveyor, thoroughly familiar with the hardships 
of forest travel, to warn the French off of territory " so notori- 
ously known to be the property of the crown of Great Britain." 
Washington faithfully delivered his message to the French 
commanders at Venango and Fort Le Boeuf in the wilds of north- 
western Pennsylvania, and was sent again the next year (1754) 
to anticipate the French in seizing the important position where 
the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio. 
He clashed with a detachment of French and Indians at Great 
Meadows, and there the first shot was fired in the great war 
which was to disturb three continents.-^ The French had secured 
the " forks of the Ohio " with a strong fort (Duquesne), but 
Washington erected Fort Necessity near by, to assert the claims 
of England to the region. His garrison was not strong enough, 
however, to hold the fort, and he was forced to surrender on 
the Fourth of July, — a day which through his own devotion and 
courage, a quarter of a century later, was to become forever 
glorious in our history. 

The war that opened with the skirmish at Great Meadows 120. Brad- 
in 1754 went badly for the English in the early years. ^ The j^^^ 

1 This war, called in Europe the Seven Years' War, and in America the French 
and Indian War, was the most tremendous conflict of the eighteenth century. In 
Europe it assumed the form of a huge coaHtion of France, Austria, Spain, Russia, 
and minor countries against Frederick the Great of Prussia. England was 
Frederick's ally, and the war brought her into conflict with France for colonial 
supremacy in India and America (see Robinson and Beard, Development of 
Modem Europe, Vol. I, pp. 68, 71), 

2 An incident of these years, which the poet Longfellow in his " Evangeline " 
has invested with a pathos far beyond its real importance, was the forcible removal 
of seven thousand French inhabitants from Acadia. Ever since the Peace of 
Utrecht, which transferred Acadia to the English, the French inhabitants had 



S-c^-o—c — of^n-SILl s.uofCupisVjii 




98 



The Struggle ivith France for North America 99 

first regular British troops sent over, under the command of 
the brave but rash General B raddock, to take Fort Duquesne, 
were surprised and almost annihilated in the Pennsylvania for- 
ests (July, 1755). Their French and Indian opponents fought 
behind rocks, trees, and bushes, in a kind of warfare utterly 
strange to the European veterans, who were used to beaten 
roads and wide fields of battle. In the awful confusion Brad- 
dock fell with nearly a thousand of his soldiers. It was only 
the gallant conduct of the young Washington, whose horse 
was shot under him twice and whose uniform was pierced with 
bullets, that saved the retreat from utter rout and panic. 

Braddock's defeat exposed the whole line of frontier settle- 121. wiiiiam 
ments from Pennsylvania to South Carolina to the savage raids turn of the 
of the Indians ; while his papers, falling into the hands of the ^^^' ^757-1759 
French, revealed and frustrated the whole plan of the English 
attacks on Niagara and the forts of Lake Champlain. A fright- 
ful massacre of English prisoners at Fort William Henry on 
Lake George, by the Indian allies of the French, added to the 
miseries of the year 1757. That same year, however, William 
Pitt, the greatest English statesman of the eighteenth century ' 

and the greatest war minister in all England's history, came into 
power. " England has been long in labor," said Frederick the 
Great of Prussia, '' and at last has brought forth a man." Pitt 
was incorruptible and indefatigable, full of confidence in Eng- 
land's destiny as the supreme world power. He immediately 
infused new life into the British armies, and fleets spread over 
half the globe. Incompetent commanders were removed, disci- 
pline was stiffened, official thieving was stopped. An army of 
22,000 Britishers was raised for the war in America, where the 
colonies, catching the infection of Pitt's tremendous energy, 

been in a semirebellious state, refusing, under the encouragement of their priests, 
to take the oath of allegiance to the " heretical " king of England. British author- 
ity in the province extended scarcely beyond the walls of the forts. On the out- 
break of the great war it was deemed necessary to remove the French from Acadia, 
and they were dispersed (not without cruelty) among the English colonies from 
Massachusetts to Georgia (September-October, 1755). 














-40 ^ O" 



E.eferences 
a.SetvMrrJe 

4 Squirrel, 

5 Trany/iortf nrti/i, Trov/i^ reacfyfn' 
Zandaiff, a^ theFth/tBaAzJlion had- 



6.^aqy^ tkatcleceived tke Snemy ancL 
■io wAich, iheBcaij mooT'dthat/a-o- 
tEC(cdtheFleetr^9vm.yJi(^ ofJirt . 



An Old View of the Siege of Quebec 
100 



The Struggle zvith France for North America loi 

voted money and troops with lavish generosity. In all, about 
50,000 troops were ready for the fourfold campaign of 1758 
against the forts of Louisburg, Ticonderoga, Duquesne, and 
Niagara. Everywhere, except for a momentary check at Ticon- 
deroga, the British and colonial troops were successful ; the 
lake forts fell, Louisburg was recaptured, and Fort Duquesne 
was rechristened Fort Pitt (Pittsburg) in honor of the incom- 
parable war minister. 

Next year came the crisis. Generals Wolfe and Amherst, the 122. woife 
heroes of Louisburg, closed in upon the heart of New France, ^^'^^s Quebec 
Wolfe leading a fleet up the St. Lawrence to attack Quebec, 
and Amherst approaching Montreal by the Hudson valley. 
After a summer of excruciating physical pain and apparent 
military failure, Wolfe conceived and executed a brilliant strate- 
gic movement. On September 12, 1759, under cover of a black 
midnight, he embarked about 3500 picked men in small boats, 
and with muffled oars dropped down the river past the French 
sentries to a deserted spot on the bank a little above the city. 
Before dawn his men, in single file, were clambering up the 
wooded path of a ravine in the precipitous bank to the heights 
above the river, where they easily overpowered the feeble 
guard. When morning broke the astonished French com- 
mander, Marquis Montcalm, saw the red coats of the British 
soldiers moving on the Plains of Abraham in front of the city, 
and hastened to the attack. Few battles in history have had 
more important results than the British victory on the Plains 
of Abraham ; none has been invested with deeper pathos. The 
fall of Quebec was the doom of the French empire in America. 
But thoughts of victory and defeat are both lost in the common 
sacrifice of victor and vanquished on that day : Wolfe, young, 
brave, accomplished, tender, dropping his head in the moment 
of victory on the breast where he wore the miniature of his 
ladylove in far-away England ; and the courteous, valorous 
Montcalm, turning a heart wrung with mortal pain and the 
anguish of defeat from the last longing for the chestnut groves 



I02 



TJic Establishment of the English 



of his beloved chateau in France, to beg the new master of Canada 

to be the protector of its people, as he had been their father.^ 
123. The Amherst took Mont- 
ParisViW ^^^^ ^^ 1760, and in the 

next two years English 

fleets completed the 

downfall of France and 

her ally Spain by seizing 

the rich sugar islands of 

the West Indies and cap- 
turing Havana in Cuba 

and Manila in the Philip- 
pines. Peace was signed 

at Paris in 1763. By its 

terms France ceded to 

England all of Canada 

and the region east of 

the Mississippi, retaining 

only the two insignificant 

islands of St. Pierre and 

Miquelon (never to be 

fortified) on the coast of 

Newfoundland for dry- 
ing their fish. To her 

ally Spain, France ceded 

New Orleans and the country west of the Mississippi. England 

gave back to France most of the islands of the West Indies ; 

1 In the governor's garden in Quebec stands the monument dedicated to these 
two noble commanders. The inscription which it bears is perhaps the most beau- 
tiful expression of commemorative sentiment in the world : 

MORTEM VIRTUS COMMUNEM 

FAMAM HISTORIA 
MONUMENTUM POSTERITAS 
DEDIT. 
• WOLFE MONTCALM 

(" Valor gave them a common death, history a common fame, and posterity a 
common monument.") 




The Wolfe-Montcalm Monument 



The Stncggle with France f 07' NortJi America 103 

and, while retaining Florida, restored Havana and Manila to 

Spain, under whose authority they were destined to remain until 

the Spanish-American War of 1898. 

The Peace of Paris was of immense importance to France, 124. signif- 

England, and America. For France it meant (except for a brief peacrfor Eng- 

revival in Napoleon's day) the abandonment of the idea of a ^^°<i' France, 
^ . and America 

colonial empire in North America. For England it marked the 

acme of colonial power, and gave the promise of undisturbed 
empire in the New World. For Canada it meant the breaking 
of the unnatural alliance with savages, and the eventual sub- 
stitution of free institutions, trial by jury, religious toleration, 
and individual enterprise in place of the narrow, paternal abso- 
lutism of the Bourbons. Finally, for the American colonies it 
furnished the conditions for future greatness by removing the 
danger from organized Indian attack along the frontiers, and 
opening the great territory west of the Alleghenies to the hardy 
pioneers and woodsmen w^ho, from the crests of the mountains, 
were already gazing into the promised land. 



REFERENCES 

The Rise of New France: W. L. Grant, The Voyages of Sanutel de 
Champlain (Original Narratives of Early American History) ; Francis 
Parkman, The Pioneers of France in the New World, La Salle and the 
Discovery of the Great West, The Old Regime in Canada; JusTiN WiNSOR, 
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. IV, chaps, iii-vii; Cartier 
to Frontenac ; R. G. Thwaites, Fj-ance in America (American Nation 
Series), chaps, i-v; Cambridge Modem History, Vol. VIII, chap. iii. 

The Fall of New France : Parkman, A Half Century of Conflict, Mont- 
calm and Wolfe; Thwaites, chaps, vi-xvii ; Edw. Channing, History 
of the United States, Vol. II, chaps, xvii-xix; Winsor, Narrative a?id 
Critical History of America, Vol. V, chaps, vii, viii ; Cambridge Modoyi 
History, Vol. VII, chap, iv ; A. B. Hart, American History told by Con- 
temporaries, Vol. II, Nos. II 7-1 29; John Fiske, Essays Historical and 
Lite?'ary, Vol. II, chap, iii; J. A. DoYLE, English Colonies in America, 
Vol. V, chap. ix. 



I04 The Establishment of the English 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Development of Louisiana: Winsor, Vol. V, pp. 13-51 ; Park- 
man, A Half Centicry of Conflict^ pp. 288-315 ; Channing, Vol. II, pp. 

532-537- 

2. The Albany Plan of Union : Old South Leaflets, No. 9 ; Thwaites, 
pp. 168-172 ; WooDROW Wilson, History of the American People, Vol. 
II, pp. 342-356. 

3. George Washington's Embassy to the French Forts: Parkman, 
Montcalm atid Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 128-161; WiNSOR, Vol. V, pp. 490- 
494; Thwaites, pp. 157-165; Old South Leaflets, No. 187; A. B. 
HuRLBERT, Washington'' s Road (Historic Highways Series), pp. 85-119. 

4. The Removal of the Acadians : Parkman, A Half Century of Con- 
flict, Vol. I, pp. 183-203 ; Montcalm and Wolfe, Vol. I, pp. 234-285 ; 
Hart, Vol. II, No. 126; Winsor, Vol. V, pp. 415-418, 452-463. 

5. The French Explorers on the Great Lakes : Thwaites, pp. 34-48 ; 
Winsor, Vol. IV, pp. 163-196; Parkman, La Salle and the Discovery 
of the Great West, pp. 1-47. 

6. Paternal Government in Canada: Parkman, The Old Regime in 
Canada, pp. 257-281 ; Thwaites, pp. 124-143 ; Cambridge Modern His- 
tory, Wo\. VII, pp. 79-87, 102-109. 



PART II. SEPARATION OF THE 
COLONIES FROM ENGLAND 



PART II. SEPARATION OF THE 
COLONIES FROM ENGLAND 

CHAPTER IV 

BRITISH RULE IN AMERICA 

The Authority of Parliament in the Colonies 

The curtain had hardly fallen on the first act of American 125. conflict 

history, the establishment and triumph of the English race in on^he AmeL 

the New World, when it rose on a second act, short but intense, ^an Revolu- 
tion 
namely the American Revolution, which severed the colonies from 

England and admitted to the family of nations the new republic 
of the United States. This great event has too often been rep- 
resented as the unanimous uprising of a downtrodden people to 
repel the deliberate, unprovoked attack of a tyrant upon their 
liberties ; but when thousands of people in the colonies could 
agree with a noted lawyer of Massachusetts, that the Revolution 
was a '' causeless, wanton, wicked rebellion," and thousands of 
people in England could applaud Pitt's denunciation of the war 
against America as " barbarous, unjust, and diabolical," it is 
evident that, at the time at least, there were two opinions as to 
colonial rights and British oppression. We can rightly under- 
stand the American Revolution only by a study of British rule 
in the colonies. 

The first English emigrants to these shores brought with them, 126. The 
by the terms of their charters, for themselves and their posterity, r/^^^'^of"^ 
'' the same liberties, franchises, immunities ... as if they had Englishmen 
been abiding and born within this our realm of England or 

107 



To8 Separation of the Colonies from England 



any other of our said dominions." Those liberties, for which 
their ancestors had been struggling for five hundred years, con- 
sisted in the right to protection of life and property, a fair trial 
and judgment by one's peers, participation in local self-govern- 
ment, freedom of movement, occupation, and trade, and, above 
all, the privilege, through the representatives of the people in 
Parliament, to grant the king the moneys needed for foreign 
war and the support of the state. In many a contest for those 
rights with headstrong kings and cruel or worthless ministers 
of state, the English nobles and commoners had won the vic- 
tory. The American colonists cherished these " immemorial 
rights of Englishmen " with what Edmund Burke called a 
"fierce spirit of liberty." A goodly number of the colonists 
had come to these shores for the express purpose of enjoying 
political and religious liberty. They had created democratic 
governments in the New World, and the three thousand miles 
of ocean that rolled between them and the mother country neces- 
sarily increased their spirit of self-reliance. While acknowledging 
allegiance to the king of England, their actual relations with the 
English government were very slight. The attempt on the part 
of English ministers to make those relations closer revealed how 
far the colonies were separated from the mother country in spirit, 
and led inevitably to their separation in fact. 

At the bottom of the misunderstanding between the colonies 
and the mother country were two developments in English his- 
tory which took place mainly in the eighteenth, century. The 
first was the growth of the mercantile theory of trade. We 
have already noted (p. 67) how this theory caused the European 
nations to regard their colonies as mere sources of profit, and 
how the English Navigation Acts were passed to cripple the 
trade of America. A striking example of the mischief done to 
colonial trade by this selfish, mistaken policy is the famous Sugar 
and Molasses Act of 1733. Barbados, Jamaica, San Domingo,' 
and other islands of the West Indies, belonging to England, 
France, Holland, and Spain, produced immense quantities of 



British Rule in AmeiHca 109 

sugar. The entire acreage of these islands was given over to 
sugar plantations, while all the necessities of life were imported. 
The American colonies, being near at hand, sent large supplies 
of fish, corn, wheat, flour, oil, soap, and lumber to the islands, 
and from this trade realized most of the gold needed to pay for 
the various manufactured goods which the mother country, in 
order to protect her own markets, forbade them to make for 
themselves. In order to compete with the French and Spanish 
colonists of the West Indies, the English sugar planters of Bar- 
bados and Jamaica, who sold great quantities of molasses to the 
New England colonies, asked the home government to forbid 
the colonies of the American mainland to trade with any foreign 
power on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Parliament yielded to 
their demands and, by the imposition of a duty of threepence 
per gallon on foreign molasses, forced the northern colonies to 
buy of British planters or give up the business of distilling. 

The colonies were naturally aggrieved at such treatment. 128. The 
They resented being burdened and restrained in their trade in Ac7s^a^con° 

order to make another part of the British Empire prosperous, ^tant menace 
^ I- r- r to the colonies 

Their sentiment was that expressed by a brave governor of 

Massachusetts in Charles II's time, when he was reproved for 

not enforcing the Navigation Acts : " The king can in reason 

do no less than let us enjoy our liberties and trade, for we have 

made this large plantation [colony] of our own charge, without 

any contribution from the crown." That a prosperous illicit 

trade flourished, and that English ministers like Walpole winked 

at the infringement of the Navigation Acts, was small comfort 

to the colonies. There the ugly laws stood on the statute book, 

and at any moment a minister might come into power who 

would think it good policy or his bounden duty to enforce them. 

The second disturbing element in the relation of England to 129. The re- 

the colonies was the question of the supremacy of Parliament. coionLs to 

The colonies (except Georgia) had been settled under grants Parliament 

not from Parliament but from the Stuart kings. The colonial 

assemblies passed laws, levied taxes, voted supplies, and raised 



no Separation of tJie Colo7iies from England 



troops for their own defense, just like the Parliament of Eng- 
land. They came to regard themselves, therefore, as filling the 
place of Parliament in America, and looked to the king as author- 
ity. But with the overthrow of the Stuarts in 1688 the position 
of king and Parliament was reversed. The king himself became 
practically a subject of Parliament, whose authority and sover- 
eignty grew continually stronger as the eighteenth century ad- 
vanced. The first kings of the Hanoverian dynasty, which 
succeeded the Stuarts on the English throne, recognized this 
change. For example, in 1624 the Stuart James I had snubbed 
Parliament when it attempted to interfere in the affairs of Vir- 
ginia, telling the House of Commons to attend to its own busi- 
ness and keep its hands off his domains ; a century later (1720) 
the Hanoverian George I instructed his governor in Massachu- 
setts to warn the inhabitants that in case of misbehavior their 
conduct would be brought to the notice of Parliament. Further- 
more Parliament extended the sphere of its interests in the colo- 
nies beyond the Acts of Trade, which had been its chief concern 
in the seventeenth century. It regulated the colonial currency, 
it made naturalization laws, it established a colonial post office. 
When the Stuart kings yielded to the power of Parliament, was 
it not useless for the colonies to plead the authority of their 
Stuart charters in opposition to that same Parliament ? Clearly, 
unless the colonies were aiming at independence — a charge 
which they indignantly denied up to the very outbreak of the 
Revolutionary War — they were subject to the sovereign power 
of England, namely the Parliament. 

During the first half of the eighteenth century many colonial 
governors and high officials wished to see the authority of Par- 
liament established beyond question in the American colonies. 
Such measures as the abolition of the New England charters, 
the union of several colonies under a single governor, the im- 
position of a direct tax by Parliament, and even the creation 
of an American nobility were recommended. But so long as 
the practical, peace-loving Walpole and the ardent patriot Pitt 



British Rtde in America III 

held the reins of government in England, no such irritation of 
the colonial spirit of independence was attempted. There were 
enough causes of friction, as it was, between the colonies and 
the mother country. Incompetent and arbitrary governors were 
often appointed, who quarreled continually with the colonial 
assemblies over salaries, fees, and appointments. The crown, 
although it had ceased at the beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury to veto acts of Parliament, continued to veto acts of the 
colonial legislatures. TKese vetoes were sometimes prompted by 
the most selfish and unworthy motives, as when statutes of Vir- 
ginia in restraint of the slave trade were annulled by the crown 
because of the heavy profits which the English courtiers were 
reaping from that infamous business. The scornful treatment 
of colonial officers and troops by the British regulars, in the 
French wars ; the increasing severity of the Navigation Acts ; 
the persistent efforts of a group of high churchmen to establish 
the Anglican Church and an Anglican bishop in America ; the 
disposition of the home government to interest itself in the col- 
onies chiefly for the purpose of restraint or punishment, — all 
contributed to a spirit of wary self-defense and proud self-suffi- 
ciency, which observant men on both sides of the water said was 
developing into a desire for independence, 

Samuel Adams in his commencement oration of 1743 at 131. Rumors 
Harvard College, in the presence of the royal governor of Mas- revolt'"^* 
sachusetts and his retinue, dared to discuss the question of 
" whether it was lawful to resist rulers in time of oppression." 
The Swedish traveler Peter Kalm, who visited this country in 
1 748-1 750, thought that the presence of the French in Canada 
was " the chief power that urged the colonies to submission." 
Many French statesmen comforted themselves for the loss of 
Canada by the thought that England " would repent having re- 
moved the only check on her colonies," which would " shake off 
dependence the moment Canada was ceded." There were even 
British statesmen who urged that England should keep Guade- 
loupe, in the West Indies, at the peace of 1763, and leave the 



112 Separation of the Colonies from England 

French undisturbed in Canada, " in order to secure the depend- 
ence of the colonies on the mother country." 

132. The The existence of such sentiment before the enactment of a 
BriS^cofo- single coercive measure by the British Parliament, or any specific 

niai policy in ^^.j- gf rebellion on the part of the American colonies, shows 
the eight- ^ ' 

eenth century what a signal failure England had made of her colonial govern- 
ment in the eighteenth century, and amply justifies the remark 
of Theodore Roosevelt, that the American Revolution was '^ a 
revolt against the whole mental attitude of Britain in regard to 
America, rather than against any one special act or set of acts." 

Taxation without Representation 

133. The '' Special acts and sets of acts," however, came in abundance 
Empire after the peace of 1763. Great Britain by her victories over the 

French in both hemispheres had become a great empire. But 
the cost had been great, too. The national debt had increased 
from ^70,000,000 to ;!^ 1 40,000,000. The British statesmen 
therefore began to devise plans for bringing the parts of the 
empire more closely together and making each contribute toward 
carrying the increased burden of colonial administration. 

134. Gren- Early in 1764 George Grenville, prime minister of England, 
the Navi^ga- got through Parliament a series of measures for the control of 
tion Acts, 1764 i-j^g trade of the American colonies. The Navigation Acts, 

especially the odious Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733, were to 
be strictly enforced, and all commanders of British frigates in 
American waters were to have the right of acting as customs 
officers, employing the hated Writs of Assistance,^ or general 
warrants to search a man's premises for smuggled articles. The 
merchants of New England saw ruin staring them in the face 
if the Navigation Acts were enforced. Massachusetts alone 
had imported 15,000 hogsheads of molasses^ from the French 

1 Against these writs the Boston lawyer James Otis had pleaded so vehemently 
three years earlier that John Adams called his speech the opening act of the 
American Revolution. 

2 Destined for the most part, unfortunately, to be made into rum for the 
African negro. 



British Rtcle in America 1 1 3 

West Indies in 1763, and the hundreds of ships launched every 
year from the colonial yards were earning by their illegal foreign 
trade a large part of the millions which had to be paid yearly 
for imported British manufactured goods. 

At the same time that the Navigation Acts were renewed 135. The 
Grenvi-lle gave notice that he intended to lay a tax on the colo- fro^Ld^by 
nies to help defray the expense of a small standing army in Grenviiie 
America. The proposal seemed reasonable and necessary, for 
at that very moment English troops west of the Alleghenies 
were engaged in the serious business of quelling an Indian up- 
rising, headed by the Ottawa chief Pontiac, who, not accepting 
the peace of 1763, had united all the tribes from the Illini to 
^ the Senecas in a last determined effort to keep the English out 
. of the Ohio valley. Every cent of the money which the ministry 
proposed to raise in America was to be spent in America, and 
the colonies were to be asked to contribute only about a third 
ofihe sum necessary. Furthermore, Grenville, who had abso- 
lute no wish to oppress or offend the colonies, was willing 
to assess the tax in the way most acceptable to the Americans. 
He himself proposed a stamp tax, which required that all official 
and public documents, such as wills, deeds, mortgages, notes, 
newspapers, pamphlets, should be written on stamped paper or 
provided with stamps sold by the distributing agents of the 
British government; but at the same time he invited the 
colonial agents in London and influential men in the colonies 
to suggest any other form of taxation which appeared to them 
more suitable, and postponed definite action in the matter for 
a year. 

• No other plan was considered, and in March, 1765, the Stamp 136. Passage 
Act was passed with very little discussion, in a half-filled Pariia- ^^^^^ stamp 

I ~ Act, 1705 

ment, by a vote of 205 to 49. Distributors of stamped paper 
were appointed for the colonies, Benjamin Franklin even solicit- 
ing the position in Pennsylvania for one of his friends. The 
British ministry anticipated no resistance to the act, which was 
to go into effect the first of November. 



114 Separation of the Colo7iies from E7tgland 



137. Patrick 
Henry's reso- 
lutions 



138. Violent 
resistance to 
the Stamp Act 



However, the Stamp Act met with furious opposition in the 
colonies. A young lawyer named Patrick Henry had just been 
elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses as a reward for his 
brave speech in the " Parsons' Cause " (a law case in which he 
denied the right of King George to veto the statutes passed by 
the Virginia legislature). On receipt of the news of the passage 
of the Stamp Act, Henry waited impatiently in his seat for the 
older and more influential members of the House to protest. 
Then toward the end of the session he rose, and in an impas- 
sioned speech which drew from some 
members of the House the cry of 
" treason ! " he presented and carried 
through the Assembly resolutions to the 
effect that '' the General Assembly of 
this colony . . . have in their representa- 
tive capacity the only exclusive right and 
power to lay taxes and imposts upon 
the inhabitants of this colony ; and that 
every attempt to vest such power in any 
other person or persons ... is illegal, 
unconstitutional, and unjust, and has a manifest tendency tg 
destroy British as well as American liberty." 

Henry's speech and resolutions stirred up great excitement 
in the colonies. James Otis of Massachusetts suggested a general 
meeting of committees from all the colonies to protest against 
this new and dangerous assault on colonial liberties. A writer 
in the New York Gazette, under the name of " Freeman," went 
so far as to suggest separation from the British Empire. When 
the stamp distributors were appointed late in the summer, they 
became the immediate objects of obloquy and persecution 
throughout the colonies; and before the first of November 
every one of them had been persuaded or forced to resign. 
There was rioting in every New England colony as well as in 
New York and Pennsylvania. In Boston the mob hanged the 
distributor, Oliver, in effigy, destroyed the building which he 




A British Stamp 



British Rule in America 1 1 5 

intended to use for his office, and shamefully wrecked the mag- 
nificent house of Lieutenant Governor Hutchinson,-^ who, as 
chief justice of the province, had given the decision in favor of 
the legality of Writs of Assistance in 1761. 

The congress suggested by Otis met at New York in October, 139. The 
with twenty-seven members from nine colonies. It published con^r^ss^^76 
a "declaration of rights and grievances," denied the legality of 
any taxes but those levied by their assemblies, and sent separate 
addresses to the king and both Houses of Parliament. These . 
first state papers of the assembled colonies were dignified, able, 
cogent remonstrances against the disturbance of sacred and 
long-enjoyed rights. 

The British Parliament had, by the Stamp Act, undoubtedly 140. why- 
usurped the most precious right of the colonists, that of voting ^^edThe^' 
their ow^n taxes. It seemed to them to have reduced their assem- stamp Act 
blies to impotent bodies and made their charters void. The chief 
safeguard of their liberties, the control of the purse strings of 
the province, was gone. It was right for Parliament to regulate 
their foreign commerce, they said ; but taxes to men of English 
descent meant the free grant of money to the king by the repre- 
sentatives of the people in Parliament assembled. Their own 
colonial legislatures stood in the place of Parliament, since they 
had no part in the Parliament convened at Westminster. When 
the British statesmen argued that the colonies were '^ virtuaily 
represented " in Parliament, because all members of the House 
of Commons represented all the British subjects except the 
nobles and the clergy, the colonists failed to follow the reason- 
ing. They knew they had no voice in the elections to the House 
of Commons, and a " representative " to them meant a man 
whom they knew and had voted for. As well tell a Virginian 
that he was " represented " in the assembly of New York as 
that he was represented in the British Parliament ! 

1 Hutchinson's fine library was sacked and the books scattered in the street. 
The manuscript of his invaluable work on the history of the Massachusetts Bay 
colony was rescued from the mud of the street. It is now in the historical museum 
in the Statehouse at Boston, the mud stains still visible on its rumpled edges. 



Ii6 Separation of the Colonies f7'07n England 



141. The re- 
peal of the 
Stamp Act, 
1766 



The violent and unexpected resistance to the Stamp Act in 
America woke in England some sense of the seriousness of the 
colonial problem. Grenville had been superseded (July, 1765) 
as prime minister by the Marquis of Rockingham, a liberal Whig 
statesman, opposed to the coercion of the American colonies. 
The Rockingham ministry moved the repeal of the Stamp Act 
early in 1766, and on the fourth of March, after the fiercest 
battle of the century in the halls of Parliament, the motion was 
carried. The hated Stamp Act had been on the British statute 




4 







The Funeral Procession of -the Stamp Act 
From an old print 

book less than a year, and had been enforced in only a few 
American towns ; yet its repeal was hailed in the colonies by as 
joyful a demonstration as could have greeted the deliverance 
from ages of cruel oppression. The British ministers might have 
learned from both the passionate protests of 1765 and the pro- 
fuse gratitude of 1766 what a sensitive spirit of liberty they had 
to deal with in America. But less than a year after the repeal 
of the Stamp Act they began to set new mischief afoot. 

In July, 1766, the Rockingham ministry fell. William Pitt, 
the creator of England's colonial empire, the stanch friend of 



British Ride in America 1 17 

America and the idol of the American people, should have taken 142. The re- 
the reins of government and guided the state to peace. But a wnHam^Ktt 
personal difference of opinion with another Whig statesman un- ^766 
fortunately kept Pitt from accepting the direction of the govern- 
ment at this critical moment. At the same time Pitt accepted 
a peerage and entered the House of Lords as the Earl of Chat- 
ham, a step which weakened his influence with the great mass 
of English commoners. And to crown the misfortune for the 
cause of America, failing health removed the great statesman 
from the activities of the cabinet almost entirely. 

In the absence of Chatham and owing to the incapacity of 143. The 
the prime minister, the direction of the policy of the British gov- Acts^ ^67^ 
emment was assumed by the abnormally gifted but vain and 
flighty Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, or min- 
ister of finance. Without the consent or even the knowledge of 
his fellow ministers, Townshend had the audacity, early in 1767, 
to introduce into Parliament new measures for raising revenue 
in America. Chatham was not there to protest, and the meas- 
ures were carried. They provided that revenue cases in Amer- 
ica should be tried in courts without a jury, declared Writs of 
Assistance valid, released colonial judges and governors from 
dependence on their assemblies for theif salaries, provided for 
commissioners of customs to reside in the American ports, and, 
for the maintenance of this " American establishment," levied 
rather heavy duties on tea, glass, lead, paper, and painter's colors 
imported into the colonies. 

Again the response of the colonies was quick and clear : Eng- 144. Re- 
land must not destroy the chartered privileges of the colonies ance^of^hr* 

or invade the immemorial ri2:hts of British freemen. The town colonies, 

. . . I 768-1 770 

meeting of Boston declared against importing any English goods 

under the new duties. The ardent Samuel Adams, after pre- 
paring an address to the British ministry, to Chatham, and to 
Rockingham, drew up a circular letter to the other colonies, 
which elicited expressions of sympathy from New Hampshire, 
Virginia, New Jersey, Connecticut, and South Carolina. The 



Ii8 Separation of the Colonies from England 

British minister for the colonies ordered the Massachusetts leg- 
islature to rescind the circular letter, as being of a '' dangerous 
and factious tendency," but the legislature flatly refused by a 
vote of ninety-two to seventeen. Whereupon two regiments of 
British troops were sent from Halifax to Boston, and landed 
under the protection of the guns of the warships which had 
brought them (September 28, 1768). Virginia stood side by side 
with Massachusetts in resisting the Townshend Acts. George 
Washington and Patrick Henry were prominent in the adoption 
of resolutions by the Burgesses condemning the taxes and main- 
taining the right of the colonies to unite in petition to the crown. 
The boycott of English goods was effective, colonial importations 
falling off from ^2,378,000 in 1768 to ;^ 1,634,000 in 1769. 
The Townshend duties, instead of yielding the ^40,000 a year 
that their author boasted to Parliament they would, produced 
only some ;^i 6,000 during the three years they were in opera- 
tion, a sum which it cost the government ^200,000 to collect. 
145. The But the total failure of the Townshend legislation to produce 

sawe!"°mo'' a revenue was not its worst effect. The bitter feelings which 
the repeal of the Stamp Act had allayed were roused again in 
the colonies. The presence of the British regiments in Boston 
was a constant source 'of chagrin to the inhabitants. It seemed 
to fix the stigma of rebellion on the province. The soldiers 
were insulted and baited by street crowds, who followed them 
with jeering cries of " ruffians ! " and '' lobster backs ! " On the 
fifth of March, 1770, an affray occurred in King Street (now 
State Street) in which the irritated soldiers fired into the crowd, 
killing five citizens and wounding several others. This " Boston 
Massacre " was the signal for the wildest excitement. A town 
meeting was called at once in Faneuil Hall, and Samuel Adams, 
proceeding as its delegate to the town house, demanded .of act- 
ing Governor Hutchinson the immediate removal of both the 
regiments from the town. Hutchinson hesitated; but Adams, 
rising to his full height and extending a threatening arm toward 
the governor, cried : " There are three thousand people yonder 



British Rifle in Avier 



ri9 



in the town meeting, and the country is rising ; night is coming 
on, and we must have our answer." The governor yielded. 

Meanwhile the storm of protests from the colonies and the 146. The 
fervent petitions of English merchants, who were being ruined party^Decem- 
by the American boycott, led Parliament to repeal the Towns- ^®''> ^773 
hcnd duties as it had the Stamp Act. In January, 1770, Lord 




The Boston Massacre 
From Paul Revere's engraving 

North became prime minister, and on the very day of the Boston 
Massacre moved to repeal all the duties except a trifling tax of 
threepence a pound on tea. King George III, in whose hands 
Lord North was a man of clay, insisted that the tax on tea be 
kept for the sake of asserting the right of Parliament to control 
the colonies. The king thought that by a smart trick he could 



I20 Separation of the Colofiies from England 

ensnare the colonies into buying the tea and paying the tax. 
He got his compliant Parliament to allow the East India Com- 
pany to sell its tea in America without paying the heavy English 
duty. Thus relieved of duties, the Company offered its tea to 
the colonists at a lower price, including the tax of threepence a 
pound, than they were paying for the same article smuggled 
from Holland. But the colonies were not to be bribed to pay 
a tax which they had refused to be forced to pay. The cargoes 
of tea which the East India Company's ships brought over to 
American ports were rudely received. Philadelphia and New 
York refused to let the ships land. The authorities at Charles- 
ton held the tea in the customhouse, and later sold it. And in 
Boston, after vainly petitioning the governor to send the tea 
back to England, a committee of prominent citizens, disguised as 
American Indians, boarded the merchantmen on the evening of 
December i6, 1773, ripped open the chests of tea with their 
tomahawks, and dumped the costly contents into Boston harbor. 

The Punishment of Massachusetts 

The " Boston Tea Party " was the last straw. The colonies 
had added insult to disobedience. The outraged king called 
upon Parliament for severe measures of punishment. Massa- 
chusetts, and especially Boston, must be made an example of 
the king's vengeance to the rest of the colonies. The province 
was an old offender. As far back as 1646 the general court 
had assembled for the ''discussion of the usurpation of Parlia- 
ment," and a spirited member had declared that '' if England 
should impose laws upon us we should lose the liberties of 
Englishmen indeed"; its attitude toward the Navigation Acts 
of Charles II has already been noticed (p. 109). A governor of 
New York had written the Duke of Newcastle (in 1732) : " The 
example and spirit of the Boston people begins to. spread abroad 
among the colonies in a most marvelous manner." Since the 
very first attempt of the British government after the French 
war to tighten its control of colonial commerce and raise a revenue 



British Rule in America 121 

in America, Massachusetts had taken the leading part in defi- 
ance. John Hancock, Joseph Warren, John Adams, James Otis, 
and, above all, Samuel Adams had labored indefatigably to rouse 
not only their own colony of Massachusetts but the whole group 
of American colonies to assert and defend their ancient privi- 
leges of self-government. Samuel Adams had published his 
circular. letter to the colonies in 1768 (see above, p. 117), and 
four years later he organized Committees of Correspondence 
in several of the colonies, to keep alive their common interests 
in resistance to Parliament's interference. Letters, pamphlets, 
petitions, defiances, had come in an uninterrupted stream from 
the Massachusetts " patriots." It was in Boston that the chief 
resistance to the Stamp Act had been offered (1765); it was there 
also that the king had stationed his first regulars in America 
(1768), and there that occurred the unfortunate ^' massacre " of 
the fifth of March (1770). "To George Ill's eyes the capital 
of Massachusetts was a center of vulgar sedition, strewn with 
brickbats and broken glass, where his enemies went about clothed 
in homespun and his friends in tar and feathers." 

When Parliament met in March, 1774, it proceeded immedi- 148. Massa- 
ately to the passage of a number of acts to punish the province i^h/d"y the' 

of Massachusetts. The port of Boston was closed to trade until " intolerable 
^ Acts " of 1774 

the tea destroyed was paid for. Town meetings, those hotbeds 

of discussion and disobedience, were forbidden to convene with- 
out the governor's permission, except for the regular elections 
of officers. The public buildings designated by the governor 
were to be used as barracks for the troops. The king's officials, 
if indicted for certain capital crimes, might be sent to England 
for trial. Up to this time the British government had not 
passed any measure of punishment or revenge. The Grenville 
legislation and the Townshend Acts, however unwelcome to the 
colonies, had not been designed for their chastisement, but only 
for their better coordination with the other parts of the British 
Empire. Parliament had blundered into legislation and backed 
out of it, pursuing a policy of alternate encroachment and 



122 Separation of the Colonies from England 

concession, — as Edmund Burke said, '^ seeking fresh principles 
of action with every fresh mail from America," and ^' sneaking 
out of the difficulties into which they had so proudly strutted." 
But with the passage of the so-called Intolerable Acts of 1774 
this shifting policy was at an end. There were no more repeals 
by Parliament. King George's '' patience " was exhausted. 

149. Sym- Expressions of sympathy now came to Massachusetts from 
Massachu- all Over the colonies. The Virginia Burgesses appointed the day 
colonies ^^^ ^^ which the Intolerable Acts were to go into force as a day of 

fasting and prayer ; and when they were dismissed by their royal 
governor for showing sympathy with " rebels," they promptly 
met again in the Raleigh tavern and proposed an annual congress 
of committees from all the colonies. 

150. The The Virginia suggestion met with favor, and on September 5, 
nentaicon- 1774? the first Continental Congress met in Carpenter's Hall, 
grass, 1774 Philadelphia, " to consult on the present state of the colonies 

. . . and to deliberate and determine upon wise and proper 
measures ... for the recovery and establishment of their just 
rights and liberties . . . and the restoration of union and harmony 
between Great Britain and the colonies, most ardently desired 
by all good men." All the colonies except Georgia were repre- 
sented, and among that remarkable group of about half a hun- 
dred men were the leaders of the ten years' struggle against the 
British Parliament, — John and Samuel Adams of Massachu- 
setts, Patrick Henry of Virginia, Stephen Hopkins of Rhode 
Island, John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, Roger Sherman of Con- 
necticut, John Rutledge of South Carolina. They respectfully 
petitioned the king to put an end to their grievances, specifying 
thirteen acts of Parliament which they deemed " infringements 
and violations " of their rights. They urged on all the colonies 
the adoption of the " American Association " for the boycott of 
British trade, both import and export, and after a six weeks' 
session adjourned, calling a new congress for the tenth of the 
following May, unless the obnoxious legislation of Parliament 
were repealed before that day. 



British Rule in America 



12 










Commemorative of the Battle on Lexington Green 

1. Statue of a minuteman, by H. H. Kitson 

2. Bowlder marking the line of Captain Parker's troops 

3. Major Pitcaim's pistols 

4. The oldest Revolutionary monument in America, 1799 

But before the second Continental Congress convened the 151. Armed 
British regulars and the rustic militia of Massachusetts had met Massachu- 
on the field of battle. General Gage, who succeeded Hutchinson ^®"^ 
as governor of Massachusetts in the summer of 1774, tried to 
prevent the colonial legislature from meeting. But in spite of his 



124 Separation of the Colonies from England 



prohibition they assembled at Salem and later at Cambridge and 
Concord. They appointed a Committee of Safety, began to col- 
lect powder and military stores, and assumed the government of 
the province outside the limits of Boston, where Gage had his 
regiments intrenched. Early in 1775 came news that Parliament, 
in spite of the pleadings of Chatham, Burke, and Fox, had re- 
jected the petition sent by the first Continental Congress, and 
had declared that " rebellion existed in the American colonies." 
On the night of the eighteenth of April Gage sent troops to 
seize the powder which the provincials had collected at Concord, 
and at the same 
time to arrest the 
" traitors," John 
Hancock and 
Samuel Adams, 
who had taken 
refuge with par- 
son Jonas Clark 
of Lexington. 
But the ardent 
Boston patriot, 
Paul Revere, had 
learned of the 




Scale of Miles 



Paul Revere's Route, April 19, 1775 



expedition, and galloping ahead of the British troops, he roused 
the farmers on the way and warned the refugees. When the 
van of the British column reached Lexington, they found a little 
company of '' minutemen " (militia ready to fight at a minute's 
notice) drawn up on the village green under Captain Parker. 
The British major Pitcairn ordered "the rebels" to disperse. 
Then came a volley of musket shots, apparently without the 
major's orders, and the British marched on, leaving eight minute- 
men dead or. dying on the green. . Reaching Concord, Pitcairn's 
troops were checked at " the rude bridge that arched the 
flood," and soon began the long retreat toward Boston, harassed 
by a deadly fire from behind stone walls and apple trees. Lord 



British Rule in America 



125 



Percy, with the main column, met the exhausted troops just 
below Lexington Green and conducted them safely within the 
British lines. The colonial militia, aroused for miles around, 
closed in upon Boston 16,000 strong and held Gage besieged 
in his capital. 








The Battle of Lexington 
From a drawing by an eyewitness 



REFERENCES 

The Authority of Parliament in the Colonies : G. E. Howard, T/ie Pre- 
limi7iaries of the Revolutiott (American Nation Series), chaps, i-v; W. 
M. Sloane, The French War and the Revolution, chap, x; J. A. Wood- 
burn, Causes of the American Revolution (John Hopkins Studies, Series 
X, No. 12) ; Leckys American Revohction, chap, i, pp. 1-49; Wm. Mac- 
Donald, Select ChaHers of American History idod-iyy^, Nos. 53-56. 

Taxation without Representation : Justin Winsor, Narrative and CHt- 
ical History of America, Vol. VI, chap, i ; John Fiske, The American 
Revolution, Vol. I, chaps, i, ii ; M. C. Tyler, Literary History of the 
American Revolution, Vol. I ; G. Otto Trevelyan, The American Revo- 
lution, Vol. I ; A. B. Hart, Americaft Histoiy told by Contemporaries, 
Vol. II, Nos. 138-152; Howard, chaps, vi-xv; MacDonald, Nos. 
57-67- 

The Punishment of Massachusetts : Fiske, chap, iii ; Trevelyan, 
chap, iii; Howard, chaps, xv-xvii ; Winsor, chap, ii ; Sloane, chaps, 
xiv, XV. 



126 Separation of the Colonies from England 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. English Opinions of the American Cause: (Dr. Samuel Johnson's) 
Hart, Vol. II, No. 156; (Wm. Pitt's) Hart, Vol. II, No. 142; Old 
South Leaflets, No. 199; (Edmund Burke's) Old South Leaflets, No. 
200; WooDBURN, Lecky's American Revolution, pp. 154-165; Trevel- 
YAN, Vol. I, pp. 28-44. 

2. The Navigation Acts : Hart, Vol. II, Nos. 45, 46, ()^^, 85, 87, 131 ; 
WiNSOR, Vol. VI, pp. 5-12 ; G. L. Beer, The Commercial Policy of Eng- 
land towards the American Colonies, pp. 35-65. 

3. The Conspiracy of Pontiac : Sloane, pp. 99-103 ; Winsor, Vol. VI, 
pp. 688-701 ; Parkman, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, Vol. I, pp. 172-321 ; 
Vol. II, pp. 299-313 ; Channing and Lansing, The Story of the Great 
Lakes, pp. 1 13-134. 

4. The Boston Tea Party: John Fiske, Essays Historical and Literary, 
Vol. II, pp. 163-195 ; A. P. Peabody, Bostojt Mobs before the Revolution 
{Atlantic Monthly, September, 1888); MacDonald, Nos. 64-70; Hart, 
Vol. II, No. 152 ; Tyler, Vol. I, pp. 246-266; Trevelyan, Vol. I, pp. 
135-139, 175-192; Old South Leaflets, No. 68. 

5. Thomas Hutchinson, the Last Royal Governor of Massachusetts : 
Sloane, pp. 163-170; Hart, Vol.11, Nos. 139-148; Fiske, Essays. 
Vol. I, pp. 1-5 1 ; Winsor, Vol. VI, pp. 49-58 ; J. H. Stark, The Loyal- 
ists of Massachusetts, pp. 145-174. 



I 



CHAPTER V 

THE BIRTH OF THE NATION 

The Declaration of Independence 

'^ The war has actually begun. The next gale that sweeps 153. Thecri- 
from the North will bring to our ears the clash of resounding spring of 1775 
arms. Our brethren are aFready in the field. Why stand we here 
idle ? . . . Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased 
at the price of chains and slavery ? Forbid it, Almighty God ! I 
know not what course others may take ; but as for me, give me 
liberty or give me death ! " These prophetic words were spoken 
by Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Burgesses less than 
a month before the '' clash of arms " at Lexington and Concord. 

Less than a month after that event the second Continental 154. The 
Congress met at Philadelphia (May 10, 1775). Events had nentai con- ' 
moved rapidly since the adjournment of the previous October. ^^^^^ 
George HI had received the petition of Congress with the re- 
mark that the " New England Governments were in rebellion " ; 
blood had been shed on both sides, not by irresponsible mobs 
or taunted soldiery, but by troops marshaled in battle ; eastern 
Massachusetts had risen in arms, and held its governor besieged 
in his capital of Boston ; and on the very day when Congress as- ' 
sembled, Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys surprised the 
British garrison in Fort Ticonderoga and turned them out " in 
the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." , 

To meet the crisis the second Continental Congress, with the 155. Formal 
tacit consent of all the colonies, assumed the powers of a regu- ^^^ by the 

lar <rovernment. It utilized the rude colonial militia gathered Congress, 

^ July 6, 1775 

around Boston as the nucleus of a continental army, and ap- 
pointed George Washington to the supreme command. It issued 

127 



can Revolu- 
tion 



128 Separation of the Colonies from England 

paper money, made trade regulations, sent agents abroad to win 
the favor of foreign courts, advised the colonies to set up gov- 
ernments for themselves, regardless of the king's officers, and 
made formal declaration of war (July 6, 1775) in these words: 
" Our cause is just. , Our union is perfect. . . . Against violence 
we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hos- 
tilities cease on the part of our aggressors." In spite of the 
fact, however, that the appeal to arms had already been made, 
there was enough conservative sentiment in the Congress to 
support John Dickinson in his motion to send a final appeal 
to the king to restore peace and harmony with his colonies in 
America. 
156. George But King George III was the last man in England to appeal 
for th?Ameri- to for the restoration of peace and harmony. There are differ- 
ences of opinion as to who was responsible on the American 
side for the outbreak of war, some scholars holding that the Rev- 
olution was " the work of an unscrupulous and desperate minor- 
ity " headed by firebrands like Patrick Henry and the Adamses ; 
others that it was the result of a slowly maturing conviction 
among the majority of the people in almost all the colonies that 
every peaceful means of preserving the priceless treasure of lib- 
erty had been exhausted. But there is no difference of opinion 
as to the author of the war on the English side. King George 
III alone was to blame for the violent rupture of his empire. 
He had come to the throne in 1760 with a firm determination, 
inculcated by his mother and his tutors, to be the ruler of Great 
Britain as well as its king. He had stubbornly refused his con- 
fidence to ministers of the nation's choice, like Pitt, and retained 
only those who would be his partners in the game of political 
intrigue. By a lavish use of bribes ("golden pills"), govern- 
ment places, and pensions he had built up a powerful party of 
the " King's Friends " in Parliament, who for fifteen years 
(1768-1783) thwarted every plan of broad and liberal states- 
manship at Westminster, and ran the great British Empire as 
if it were the private estate of King George and his lackeys. 



The Birth of the Nation 1 29 

The counsels of the wisest statesmen of the empire — of a 157. The de- 
Burke, a Chatham, a Fox — were hooted down in Parliament or the British 
received with silent contempt by George Ill's ministers. A few government, 
independent spirits pleaded in vain with Parliament for a few 
moments of attention while they discussed the most vital ques- 
tion of the day and of the century. We have the unanimous 
testimony of the foremost English historians of the nineteenth 
century that George III was the evil genius of the British Em- 
pire. '^^ He had rooted out courage, frankness, and independence 
from the councils of state, and put puppet's in the place of men " 
(Trevelyan) ; '^ his tactics were fraught with danger to the liber- 
ties of the people " (May) ; ^' his acts were as criminal as any 
which led Charles I to the scaffold " (Lecky) ; and '^ the shame 
of the darkest hour of England's history lies wholly at his 
door" (Green). 

It was to such a king that the American people — a people 
described by a French visitor, the Count of Segur, as ^' men of 
quiet pride who have no master, who see nothing above them 
but the law, and who are free from the vanity, the servility, the 
prejudices of our European societies " — sent their last vain 
petition for justice in the summer of 1775. It need not sur- 
prise us that the king and his ministers did not deign even to 
receive and read it. 

Until the second petition of Congress had been spumed, the 158. Ameri- 
leaders of the colonial resistance to parliamentary taxation al- tations of 
most to a man protested their loyalty to King' George III and ^Jgiand be- 
the British Empire. " I have never heard from any person fore 1776 
drunk or sober," said Benjamin Franklin to Lord Chatham in 
1774, " the least expression of a wish for separation." Washing- 
ton declared that even when he went to Cambridge to take com- 
mand of the colonial army, the thought of independence was 
" abhorrent " to him. And John Adams said that he was avoided 
in the streets of Philadelphia in 1775 '' like a man infected with 
leprosy" for his leanings toward " independency." To be sure, 
there were skeptical and ironical Tories in the colonies, who 



130 Separation of tJic Colonies from England 



159. The 
events of the 
year 1775 
widen the 
breach be- 
tween Eng- 
land and the 
colonies 



declared that the protestations of loyalty in the petitions of Con- 
gress and in the mouths of the " patriots " were only " the gold 
leaf to conceal the treason beneath " ; but it is hard to believe 
that men like Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Jay were 
insincere in their public utterances. 

However, by the end of 1775 the doctrine of the allegiance 
of the colonies to King George was so flatly contradicted by the 
facts of the situation that it became ridiculous. From month to 
month the breach between the colonies and the mother countiy 
had widened. In March, 1775, Benjamin Franklin, who for ten 
years had been the agent for several of the colonies in London, 
■ returned to America, thereby confessing that nothing more was 
to be accomplished by diplomacy. In April occurred the battle of 
Lexington. In May came the bold capture of FortTiconderoga. In 
June Gage's army stormed the American breastworks on Bunker 
Hill in three desperate and bloody assaults, and burned the ad- 
jacent town of Charlestown. In July Massachusetts set up a new 
government independent of the king, and George Washington 
took command of the colonial army which was besieging Gage 
in Boston. In August King George issued a proclamation call- 
ing on all loyal subjects to suppress the rebellion and sedition in 
North America. In September he hirfed 20,000 German soldiers 
from the princes of Hesse, Anhalt, and Brunswick, to reduce the 
colonies to submission. In October a British captain, without 
provocation, sailed into Falmouth harbor (Pordand, Maine) and 
burned the town, rendering 1000 people homeless on the eve of 
a severe New England winter. In November two small Amer- 
ican armies under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold 
were invading Canada with the sanction of the Continental Con- 
gress. And on the last day of December, 1775, in a blinding 
snowstorm, the colonial troops made an attack on Quebec, in 
which Montgomery was killed and Arnold severely wounded. 
The news of the burning of Falmouth and the king's contract 
for German mercenaries reached Congress on the same day. 
The indignation of the assembly was extreme. ^' I am ready 



The Birth of the Nation 



131 




EXCELLENCY 



WILLIAM TRYON, Esquire, 



Giptain General, and Governor in Chief in and over the Province of NewrTork, and the 
Territories depending thereon in America, Chancellor and Vice Admiral of the fame. 

A PROCLAMATION. 

ylTHEREAS r Tiave received His JViajefiy's Royaf Froc/amatioi, given at Inc Court at St. James's, the Twenty- 
* '^ third Day o{ Au^ift laft, in the Words following 1 | 

BY THE KING, 
A Proclamatioa 



For fupprefsing 
GEORGE R. 



RllBELLLON and SEDITION. 



WHEREAS many o( our Subjcds in divers I Parts of our Colonies and Plantations !n Kenh-Anuritt, milltd dy 
dangerous and Ul dcfigning Men, and forgetlC^g ihc AUegianee which they owe to the Power that has protefled and' 
fuftapncd them, after various diforderly Atls ..ommitted in difturbance of the public Peace, to the Obftnj£)ion of 
laiWul Com.TC.v^, snj to thi Cpp.'e&at ot Oi)r loyal Subjefts carrying on the fanic, have at length proceeded to 
an open and avowed Rebellion, by arraying thfcmfelves in hoftilc Manner, to withftanj the Execution of the Law, 
and traitoroully preparing, ordering and levying War againft us ; And whereas there it Reafon to apprehend that fuch 
Rebellion hath been much promoted and encSuiaged by the traitorous Correfpondenct, Counfels, and Comfort of 
divers wicked and dcfperate Perfons within this Realm : — To the End therefore that none of our $-ubje£ts may 
ncglcit or violate their Duty through Ignorance thereof, or through any Doubt of the Prote£hon which the Law will afford to their Loyally and Zeal ; 
«e have thought lit, by and with the Advice of our Privy Council, to lITue this our Royal Proclamation, hereby declaring, that not only all our Officers 
Ctvil and Military, arc oUiged to exert their utmoft Endeavours to fupprefs fuch Reb9llion, and to bring the Traitors to Juftice ; but that all our 
Suhjefls of this Realm and the Dominions thereunto belonging, ere bound b^ Law to be aiding and aflifting in the Suppctflion of fuch Rebellion, 
and to difclofe and make known all traitorous Confpiracies and Attempts againft us, our Crown and Dignity : And we do accordingly ftri£Uy charge 
and command all our Officers, as well Civil as Military, and all other our obedijnt and loyal Subjeas, to ufe their utmoft Endeavours to withftand and 
lifP'h fuch Rebellion, and to difclofe and make known all Treafons and traif<>rou8 Confpiracies which they (hall know to be agamft ui, our Crown 
and Digniry ; and for that Purpofe, that they tranfmit to one of our principal Secretaries of State, or other proptr Officer, due and fiiU Information of 
* " be found carrying on Corrcfpondence with, or in any M^ner ir Degree aiding or abetting the Perfons now ii 
^ :.."-__ ^ r ^.,.-: JD, ^njJn/A'l'r - ■ • "• ■■ * .. - - 



I Ptrftns who (hall 1 



againfti 



r Govemmert withio ; 



Cojo, 



,and Afetors orfiich traitorous DeGgns. J 

Cm* at imr Cavl el Si. Jamu'i ibi Tatnty-lbirJ Diif cf Auguft, 0« flxlfi*J 



?\mUUopiJii\tf!r'J^^mtrUa, in order to bring to condign Ponillimeiit the Amhors, 
r HunJriJ cnj Str.ntjf-frx, h ibt Fiflmlb Tear cfotr Stift. 

In Obedience therefore to his Majel^ly's Commands'tome givenildo hereby publilh and make known hisMajefty's 
nioft gracious Proclamation above recited ; eameftly exhortinfc ana requiring all his Majefty's loyal and faithful SuS- 
J*Qs within this Province, as they value their Allegiance due JotMbeit of Sovereigns, their Dependance on and Pro- 
tpSion from their Parent State, and the Bleflings of a mild, free, ind happy Conftitution; and as they would fliun 
tjie fatal Calamities which are the inevitable Confequences of Safcion and Rebellion, to pay all due Obedience to 
'he Laws of their Country, ferioufly to attend to his Majefly's laid Proclamation, and govern themfelves accordingly. 

Cmt taJiT mj HawJ tad Seal al Arms, >» rir Oi^ < New-Vork, (ie /i»UMiA Ojj 0/ November, Omi Tlemfaul Sntn HaJrtil t^ Smwij-ftt, 
" iIh Shaianb Tm ^ the Sririti/tta- SfxJrri'ltr'/CEllticltlxTlirMltiprm o/GW>/Great-Britain,Fi«llct4*/Ireland, JCW,/V«Hb' 

^:u^b,a.^^ II Wm. T R Y Oj N. 

»«s«7 r: n n Raw ikE; KING, ! 



""T lus ExceUeacy's OxDmanil, 
""i"'!- Bir»«i>,Jiiii.a,SeciT 



King George Ill's Proclamation of Rebellion 

now, brother rebel," said a Southern member to Ward of Rhode 
Island, " to declare ourselves independent ; we have had suffi- 
cient answer to our petition." 

On the tenth of January, 1776, there came from a press in I60. Thomas 
Philadelphia a pamphlet entitled "Common Sense " which made ^^'°^'^ "^""'^ 



132 Separation of the Colonies from England 



COMMON SENSE: 

ADDRESSED TO THE 

INHABITANTS 

OF 

AMERICA, 

On the follairioj mtcreftinj 

SUBJECTS. 



III. Tkoughtt en th« ftgri* Suu or AirxT^on AIT'h*. 



tens of thousands throughout the colonies ready also to declare 
themselves independent. The author was Thomas Paine, an 
Englishman of scanty fortune but liberal ideas, who had won 
Franklin's friendship in London and had come to the colonies 
in 1774 with what he later called '' an aversion to monarchy, as 
debauching to the dignity of man." For generations the odium 
attaching to Thomas Paine's name for his bold assault on ortho- 
dox theology in ''The Age of 
Reason" has obscured the 
merit of his great services to 
the cause of American free- 
dom. In "Common Sense" 
he argued with convincing 
clearness that the position of 
the colonies was thoroughly 
inconsistent, — in full rebel- 
lion against England, yet pro- 
testing loyalty to the king. He 
urged them to lay aside sen- 
timental scruples, to realize 
that they were the nucleus of 
a great American nation des- 
tined to cover the continent 
and to be an examp].e to the 
world of a people free from 
the servile traditions of mon- 
archy and the low public morals of the Old World. It is doubtful 
whether any other printed work in all American history has had 
a greater influence than Paine's " Common Sense." Over 1 00,000 
copies were sold, the equivalent of a circulation of 25,000,000 
in our present population. Washington spoke enthusiastically of 
the "sound doctrine and unanswerable reasoning" of the pam- 
phlet ; and Edmund Randolph, the first attorney-general of the 
United States, said that the declaration of the independence of 
America was due, next to George III, to Thomas Paine. 



"Written^ an E N G^I S H M A N. 


u 

Mill lonn -., H'A^ 
0. V^t ^<m. ckoiu 





PHILADELPHIA, 9^^^^*. 

A*4 Sot4 t7 R. BELL, In ThiriSiTfco |,;S. 



Title-page of Thomas Paine's Pam- 
phlet, '' Common Sense " 



The Birth of the Nation 133 

When, therefore, the legislature of North Carolina ordered 161. Lee of 
its representatives in Congress to advocate independence,^ Vir- posSTiTde-"' 
ginia and all the New England colonies fell quickly into line. Prudence 
The Virginia delegation took the lead, its chairman, Richard 
Henry Lee, moving, on the seventh of June, that these imited 
colonies are a?id of ?'ight ought to be free afid ifidepende?it states, 
that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crow?i, 
and that all political connection between them a?id the state of 
Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved. 

The vote on this momentous motion was postponed until the 162. Thomas 
first of July, and a committee composed of Jefferson, Franklin, drart?the 
John Adams, Sherman, and Livingston was appointed to frame i>eciaration of 
a fitting declaration of independence in case the motion was 
carried. Jefferson wrote the document in the fervor of sponta- 
neous patriotism, '' without reference to book or pamphlet," 
as he later declared. His draft was somewhat modified by the 
other members of the committee, especially Adams and Franklin. 
The wonderful Declaration of Independence, engrossed on 
parchment and signed by fifty-six members of the Congress, is 
still preserved in the State Department at Washington.^ 

On the first day of July, Lee's motion was taken from the 163. The 
table for debate, and on the next day was passed by the vote of adopted /*^° 
all the colonies except New York. Two days later (July 4) J'^^y 4, 1776 
Jefferson's Declaration was adopted. We celebrate the latter 
event in our national holiday, but the motion declaring our inde- 
pendence was carried the second of July.^ 

1 The taxpayers of North CaroUna had already resisted the king's troops in 
arms, in 1771, at Alamance, near the source of the Cape Fear River. They had 
been beaten and a number of them had been hanged as traitors. In May, 1775, 
some North Carolina patriots, of the county of Mecklenburg, had voted that 
'' the king's civil and military commissions were all annulled and vacated." This 
vote was practically a declaration of independence by the patriots of Mecklenburg 
County, but no formal declaration was drawn up, and the North Carolina dele- 
gates failed to report the resolution to the Continental Congress. 

2 Until 18-94 this most famous document in our archives was on view to the 
public, but in that year, owing to the rapid fading and cracking of the parchment, 
the document was withdrawn from contact with the light and air. 

3 John Adams declared that the second of July would be forever celebrated as 
the most glorious day in our history. 



134 Separation of the Colonies from England 



164. Analy- 

Deciarationof respect for the opinion of mankind.' 



The Declaration of Independence was issued out of " a decent 

It asserted in the opening 
Independence paragraph that all men are created equal and endowed with 
" certain inalienable rights," such as " life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of happiness," which it is the purpose of all governments 
to secure ; and that "whenever any form of government becomes 
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or 



I 



I ^ /AMERICA, u. f?i..^<^«^ Crvvj^/ .^.ve^rv^ej 



It/lUor*. •/> 






I .— ... 



D 



1 ^., :.., U.^-tc ^^^-^^.-gr*:^*^. - 






t^^t-CkUi <i^iy^\ 



ILj;^^^^^^^^ 



-v^v..^ <^ir^u,kdLji ^^ — , -^-^ ^<-^ r-^ ^ 



Facsimile of the Opening Lines of the Declaration of Independence 

to abolish it." The king of Great Britain, it declared, had violated 
those rights by a long train of abuses, and in proof there was 
submitted to a candid world a list of twenty-seven arbitrary and 
tyrannical acts aimed at the liberty of his American subjects. He 
had proved himself unfit to be the ruler of a free people. "We, 
therefore," concludes the Declaration, " the Representatives of 
the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, 
. . . solemnly publish and declare, that these United Colonies 
are, and of Right ought to be, Free and Independe7it States. . . . 



I 



The Birth of the Nation 1 3 5 

And for the support of this Declaration, with firm reliance on 

the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each 

other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." 

The effect of the Declaration of Independence was momen- 165. Effect 
1 • • c ,^ 1-1 -i- of the Decla« 

tous. It put an end to the mconsistency 01 the colonial position, ration 

It made the troops of Washington, poor and meager as they 
were, a national army. It changed the struggle on the part of 
America from one of armed resistance to the unlawful acts of a 
sovereign still acknowledged, to a war against a foreign king and 
state ; and on the part of England, from a quarrel with rebel- 
lious subjects to the invasion of an independent country. Until 
the Declaration was published the Tories or Loyalists, of whom 
there were hundreds of thousands in the American colonies, 
were champions of one side of the debatable question, namely, 
whether the abuses of the king's ministers justified armed 
resistance ; but after the Declaration loyalty to the king of 
Great Britain became treason to their country. As traitors they 
were accordingly treated — their property confiscated, their utter- 
ances controlled, and their conduct regulated by severe laws in 
every one of the new states. 

The issue was now clearly defined. The new nation of the 166. wash- 
United States was fighting for its very existence. In a general mends the 
order of July 9,1776, Washington communicated the Declaration ^^^ ^° ^^^ 
to his army in New York, whither he had moved after compel- 
ling Howe to evacuate Boston (May 17, 1776). " The General 
hopes," read the order, " that this important event will serve as 
an incentive to every officer and soldier to act with fidelity and 
courage, as knowing that now the peace and safety of his country 
depend (under God) solely on the success of our arms ; and 
that he is in the service of a state possessed of sufficient power 
to reward his merit and advance him to the highest honors of 
a free country."^ 

1 The troops and the citizens of New York celebrated this announcement by 
throwing down the leaden statue of George III, which stood on Bowling Green, 
and melting it into bullets for the colonial rifles. 



136 Separation of the Colonies from England 



The Revolutionary War 



167. Wash- 
ington's dis- 
astrous re- 
treat across 
New Jersey, 
1776 



A detailed description of battles and campaigns is profitable 
only to experts in military science, whereas the causes that lead 
a country into war, especially into a war for independence, are 
most important stages in the evolution of a people's political 
and moral life. Therefore, after our rather full study of the 
preliminaries of the American Revolution, we shall dwell but 
briefly on the actual conflict. 

After Washington had compelled the British to evacuate 
Boston, the three major generals, Howe, Clinton, and Bur- 
goyne, assumed the conduct of the war against the rebellious 
colonies (May, 1776). Washington tried to defend New York, 
but Howe's superior force of veterans drove his militia from 
Brooklyn Heights, Long Island, and compelled him to re- 
treat step by step through the city of New York and up the 
Hudson, then across the river into New Jersey, and then across 
the state of New Jersey to a safe position on the western bank 
of the Delaware. With 3000 men left in the hands of the 
British as prisoners, and 7000 more under the command of the 
insubordinate and treacherous Charles Lee refusing to come to 
his aid, Washington wrote to his brother in December : "If 
every nerve is not strained to recruit a new army with a]J pos- 
sible expedition, I think the game is pretty nearly up." A 
determined move by Howe from New York to the Delaware 
might easily have overwhelmed the remnants of Washington's 
army, some 2000 troops, and put an end then and there to 
the American Revolution. But fortunately for the patriot cause 
Howe was a lukewarm enemy. Surrounded by Tory flatterers, 
he believed that in chasing Washington from New York and 
New Jersey he had already given the American rebellion its death- 
blow, and that he had only to wait a few weeks before the peni- 
tent Congress at Philadelphia would be suing for the pardon 
George III had authorized him to grant when resistance to the 
royal will should cease. 



The Birth of the Nation 137 

But Washington with magnificent audacity recrossed the 168. His 
Delaware on Christmas night of 1776, surprised and over- New^jersey, 

whelmed a post of 1000 Hessians at Trenton, and a few days i>ecember, 

■^ 1776-january, 
later defeated the British column of Lord Cornwallis at Prince- 1777 

ton and drove it back to the neighborhood of New York. 
The courage and skill of Washington had saved the patriot 
cause. Enlistments increased ; many loyalists in New Jersey 
swore allegiance to the United States ; and our agents and 
emissaries in Europe took courage to urge our cause. Corn- 
wallis himself, when complimenting Washington five years later 
on the skill with which the latter had forced him to the final 
surrender at Yorktown, added : " But after all, your Excel- 
lency's achievements in New Jersey were such that nothing 
could surpass them."^ 

Disappointed in their hopes that the patriot cause would col- 169. The 
lapse of itself, the British ministry prepared an elaborate plan of paign for\^e 
attack for the campaign of 1777. Three armies were to invade control of the 

^ ^ ' ' ' Hudson, 1777 

New York. Burgoyne, descending from Montreal via Lake 
Champlain and the upper Hudson; St. Leger, marching east- 
ward from Lake Ontario through the Mohawk valley ; and 
Howe, ascending the Hudson from New York City, were to 
converge at Albany and so, by controlling the Hudson, were to 
shut New England off from the southern colonies. This ambi- 
tious scheme, with its total disregard of the conditions of travel 
in northern and western New York, showed how little the British 
War Department had learned from Braddock's defeat twenty 
years earlier. 

St. Leger, toiling through the western wilderness, was effectu- 170. Bur- 
ally stopped by the brave old German Indian fighter, General fe^dTr'ar'" 
Herkimer, long before he had got halfway to Albany ; Howe's Saratoga, 
instructions to move up the river were tucked into a pigeon- 1777 
hole by the war minister. Lord George Germaine, who was anxious 
to get off to the country to shoot pheasants, and left there to 

1 A vivid account of this wonderful campaign is given in John Fiske's Amer- 
ican Revolution, Vol. I, pp. 239-247. 



138 Separation of the Colonies from England 

gather the dust of years ; while Burgoyne, fighting his way step 
by step against the dead resistance of the tangled and cluttered 
forests of northern New York and the live resistance of New 
England riflemen who gathered in swarms to harass his fatigued 
columns, was brought to bay near Saratoga, and by the dash- 
ing charges of Arnold, Morgan, and Schuyler was obliged to 
surrender his total force of 6000 men and officers to General 
Horatio Gates, commander of the continental army on the 
Hudson (October 17, 1777). 

171. The Sir Edward Creasy has included Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga 
of theiar'"* among his "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World." It was the 

turning point of the Revolution. The total failure of the Hudson 
River campaign left the British without a plan of war. To be 
sure, General Howe had sailed down from New York to the head 
of Chesapeake Bay, while he ought to have been marching up 
the Hudson to join Burgoyne, and seized and held the " rebel 
capital," Philadelphia, in spite of Washington's plucky oppo- 
sition at Brandywine Creek and Germantown. But though the 
British officers with their Tory friends in Philadelphia were 
spending a gay winter at fetes and balls while Washington's 
destitute fragment of an army was shivering and starving at 
Valley Forge near by, nevertheless the advantage of the winter 
of 177 7- 1778 was with the Americans. 

172. Great The attempts of the British both to crush Washington's army 
fe"ms of°^^" and to sever the northern and southern colonies had failed. The 
peace, March, impossibility of occupying the country back of the few seaport 

towns, such as New York, Newport, and Philadelphia, began 
to be apparent to the British ministry, as it had from the first 
been apparent to many British merchants, who had advised 
making the war a purely naval one, for the blockade of the 
American ports and the destruction of their commerce. The 
amiable Lord North, distressed as much by the prolongation 
of the war as by the disaster to Burgoyne, was allowed to 
send an embassy to the American Congress early in 1778, con- 
ceding to the colonies every right they had contended for since 









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HLdlfc^I^I^BPm 


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The Birth of the Nation 



139 






^^.t**/ 6xt 



the days of the Stamp Act, if they would only lay down their 
arms and return to British allegiance. 

But Lord North's offer came too late. The victory at Sara- 173. The 
toga had opened the eyes of another court and sovereign. The ance, Febru- 

French ministry, which ^^' ^^'^ 

(2X ^^^ss^y^ tor over a year had been 

^ ^^^ relusmg the repeated re- 
quests of the colonies for 
an alliance, doubting if the 
American revolt were a 
weapon strong enough to 
use in taking revenge on 
England for the humiliat- 
ing defeat of twenty years 
before, decided in the af- 
firmative after Saratoga. 
In February, 1 7 78, treaties 
of commerce and alliance 
were signed by the French 
and American diplomats. 
The treaty of alliance (the 
only one ever made by the 
United States) pledged 
each nation to continue 
the war with England 
until the other was ready 
to make peace. 

The French alliance 174. The war 
, ' £ x^v, assumes a 
was a great gam for the European 

Americans. By it the in- character, 
dependence of the United States was recognized by the strong- 
est power of continental Europe. Men and money, both sorely 
needed, were furnished to the struggling states, and, above all, 
a fleet was sent over to deliver the American seaports from 
the British. John Paul Jones, the intrepid sea fighter, was fitted 



C^^^^- X X X . . » X , < < - . . 

^jA-u<>aJ Xi -/naJi£/^ ate- ««*<v^*t«/ cui^ ^t.<r/^ 




^^^^ 



*JU'^rt4t%^dyc!!ti^t*,^i^, 



Letter of Franklin to the Count of Ver- 
gennes, — the Earliest Diplomatic Corre- 
spondence of the American Congress 



140 Separatioti of tJic Colonics from England 

out with five vessels in France, and flying the new American 
flag from the masthead of the Bonhommc Richard, attacked the 
British frigates in their own waters. As the war assumed a Euro- 
pean aspect, Spain joined England's enemies (1779) with the 
hope of regaining the stronghold of Gibraltar ; and the next year 
Holland, England's old commercial rival, came into the league 
for the destruction of Britain's naval power and the overthrow 
of her colonial empire. Thus the American Revolution, after the 
victory at Saratoga, developed into a coalition of four powers 
against Great Britain ; and the American continent became 
again, for the fifth time within a century, the ground on which 
France and England fought out their mighty duel. 

175. Lee and Not caring to defend the forts on the Delaware against a 
at Monmouth, French fleet, the British evacuated Philadelphia in the early sum- 
August, 1778 ^^^^ q£ 1778, and fell back upon New York, escaping defeat at 

the hands of the American army on the way only by the treach- 
ery of General Charles Lee, who basely ordered a retreat at the 
battle of Monmouth. Washington arrived on the scene of action 
in time to save the day for the x\merican cause, and sent Lee 
into long-merited disgrace. 

176. The war At the close of 1 778 the British transferred the seat of war 
1778-1781 ' to the South, with a view of detaching the states below the Po- 
tomac from the patriot cause. There was much British senti- 
ment in Georgia and the Carolinas, where Sir Henry Clinton 
enrolled some 2000 Loyalist troops in his army. The war in 
the Carolinas assumed a civil character, therefore, marked by 
bitter partisan fighting and guerrilla raids. The British had no 
systematic plan of campaign, but marched and countermarched 
in an irregular line from coast to interior and interior to coast, 
wherever the resistance was least and the hope of attract- 
ing soldiers to their banners greatest. Their capture of Savan- 
nah in December, 1778, enabled them to reestablish the royal 
government in Georgia, and in 1780 they took Charleston, the 
other great southern port. In the interior of the Carolinas 
they were generally successful, until General Nathanael Greene, 



The Birth of the Nation 1 4 1 

next to Washington the ablest c(-)mmander on the American 
side, was sent to replace Gates, the " hero of Saratoga," who 
had ignominiously fled from the field on his defeat at Camden, 
South Carolina (August, 1780).^ By the victory at Cowpcns 
(January, 1781J and the valiant stand at Cuilford (March, 1781) 
Morgan and Greene retrieved the defeat of Gates and recovered 
the interior of the Carolinas. 

The most remarkable battle and the turning point of the war 
south ' of the Potomac River was the engagement at Kings 
Mountain, on the border between North and South Carolina, 
where about 1 000 sturdy frontiersmen and Indian fighters from 
the Carolinas and Georgia put to rout a body of some 1200 Tory 
militiamen collected by Colonel Ferguson, who had been sent by 
General Cornwallis to clear the guerrillas out of the upland 
regions and make his march through the Carolinas easy. 

Meanwhile the most distressing incident of the war was tak- 177. The 
ing place on the Hudson. Benedict Arnold, who had so signally g'^nedic'? ° 
distinguished himself for bravery at Quebec and Saratoga, had Arnold 
not been advanced so rapidly in the American army as he thought 
he deserved to be. Encouraged by his friends among the British 
officers, and by his wife, who had been a belle in the Tory 
circles of Philadelphia, he nursed his injured pride to a point 
where he determined to betray his country. He easily obtained 
from Washington the command of the important fortress of West 
Point on the Hudson, and forthwith opened negotiations with 
Sir Henry Clinton to hand the post over to the British. Major 
Andre, the British agent in the transaction, was caught inside 
the American lines at Tarrytown and the incriminating papers 
were found in his boots. He was hanged as a spy. Warned of 
Andre's capture in the nick of time, Arnold fled hastily from 
his breakfast table and reached a British war vessel lying in 

1 Baron De Kalb, who, with Lafayette, had joined Washington's army during 
the famous campaign of 1776, was killed in this battle. Other distinguished 
foreigners who gave their services to the American cause were Baron Steuben, a 
veteran Prussian officer, and the Polish generals, Kosciusko and Pulaski. The 
latter was mortally wounded in the attack on Savannah, October 9, 1780. 



142 Separation of the Colonies front England 

the Hudson. He was rewarded with a brigadier generalship in 
Clinton's army, and assumed command of the British troops 
in Virginia.-^ 






^,.^^„.^ <:/1lC^c^^ Q.i^^'*-*^^ cr*^ i>^^^ 

J^gC^^VaZiy .y^^i-f^a^ /^?«^<t«^ .. ■' V:^ 2" 



Paper found in Andre's Possession 

178. The Arnold was joined by Lord Cornwallis (to whom Clinton had 

paign°^i78^'"" turned Over his command in the South) in the summer of 1781. 

Their combined forces fortified a position at Yorktown, to await 

1 After the war Arnold went to England to live, where he had to endure at 
times insolent reminders of his treachery. He died, an old man, in London, June 
14, 1 801, dressed, by his own pathetic request, in his old colonial uniform with 
the epaulets and sword knot presented to him by Washington after the victory 
of Saratoga. In the great monument erected on the battlefield of Saratoga (1883) 
the niche which should contain Arnold's statue is left empty, while statues of 
Gates, Morgan, and Schuyler adorn the other three sides of the monument. 



The Birth of the Nation 



143 




■Washington's Campaigns 
Cornwallis' March 1780-1781 



The War on the Atlantic 
Seaboard 



a British fleet bringing reenforce- 
ments from New York. Corn- 
wallis's object was to conquer 
the state of Virginia, which was 
protected only by a meager force 
under the gallant young Mar- 
quis de Lafayette, Washington's 
trusted friend, and the most de- 
voted of the eleven foreign major 
generals who served in the 
American army. 

But the tables were turned on 179. com 
Cornwallis. While he was wait- renders at 

ing in Yorktown, a French fleet ^^'^^^'^'^^ 
^ ' October 19 

under De Grasse, arriving off 1781 
the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, 
defeated the British squadron 
which was bringing the reen- 
forcements from New York, and 
landed 3000 French troops on 
the peninsula in their stead. At 
the same moment Washington, 
always on the right spot at the 
right moment, conducted a bril- 
liant . march of four hundred 
miles from the Hudson to the 
York River, with 2000 Ameri- 
cans and 4000 Frenchmen, and 
effecting a junction with Lafa- 
yette, penned Cornwallis up in 
the narrow peninsula between the 
York and the James. Cornwallis 
made a brave but vain effort to 
break the besieging lines. On the 
nineteenth of October, 1 7 8 1 , four 



144 Separation of the Colonies from England 



years, almost to the day, after Burgoyne's surrender at Sara- 
toga, Cornwallis delivered his sword to Washington, surrender- 
ing his army of 7000 men and officers as prisoners of war. 
The British attempt to conquer the revolting colonies was over. 
North and south their armies had met with disaster. They 
abandoned the posts which they still held, with the exception 
of New York, and withdrew to 



180. The war 

in the West 




Rocliambeau 

A 

Wasliihgton 



Lafa^ptte ^ ^ 



The Siege of Yorktown 



the West Indies to triumph over 
France in a great naval battle 
and still preserve their ascend- 
ancy in that rich region of the 
western world. 

While the American army on 
the Atlantic seaboard was suc- 
cessfully repelling the British in- 
vasion with the aid of the French 
fleet, a bold campaign was being 
conducted by the hardy fron- 
tiersmen of the west for the over- 
. throw of England's authority 
beyond the Alleghenies. 

181. The In the very year that the British took possession of the vast 

Proclamation . , . . ,._,.... 

Line of 1763 terntory between the eastern mountams and the Mississippi, 

King George had issued a proclamation forbidding his governors 
in the American colonies to extend their authority or to permit 
settlement west of a line running along the crest of the Allegheny 
mountains. The ostensible reason for drawing this '' Proclama- 
tion Line " was to secure the allegiance and trade of the Indians 
so lately devoted to France, by giving them assurance that their 
hunting grounds would not be invaded by the white settlers 
from across the mountains ; but the real reason was to curtail 
the power of the colonies, discredit their old " sea-to-sea " char- 
ters, and confine them to the narrow region along the Atlantic 
coast, where they could be within easier reach of the British 
authority. 



The Bi7'th of the A^atiori 



145 



It was a bitter disappointment to the ambitious frontiersmen, 182. The 
after having defeated the French attempt to shut them in be- march of the 
hind the mountains, to have the British king adopt the same Pioneers 
policy. They felt that they were being kept out of a region 
destined for them by nature, and they resented being left exposed 
to danger from the fierce Indians that swept up and down the 
frontier in their intertribal raids and wars. Therefore the sturdy 




A Pioneer Kentucky Setdement 



woodsmen and pioneers from the back counties of Pennsyl- 
vania, Virginia, and the Carolinas had pushed across the moun- 
tains into the densely wooded land of the Ohio, the Cumberland, 
and the Tennessee valleys. In 1 769 Daniel Boone, the most cele- 
brated of these pioneers, set out from his home in North Car- 
olina to seek '' Kentucke " (the " dark and bloody ground "), 
which was stained by centuries of Indian feuds. In the next 
three years Virginia pioneers, led by James Robertson and John 
Sevier, had founded settlements on the Watauga River in the 



146 Separation of the Colonies from England 



western mountains of North Carolina ; and, like the early emi- 
grants to the shores of New England, were devising a govern- 
ment even while they were clearing the soil and defending their 
rude homes against the attack of the savages. 




The Revolutionary War in the West 

183. The Vic- Though Pontiac's great conspiracy (p. 113) to keep the 
Kanawha and English out of the forts of the Northwest had been crushed 
(1765), and the Iroquois had abandoned their claims to the 
region south of the Ohio River (1768), nevertheless the 
savage tribes of Mingos, Shawnees, and Cherokees disputed 
with the white men every mile of the territory west of the Alle- 
ghenies. In October, 1774 (while the first Continental Congress 
was discussing methods of resistance to English taxation), a great 



The Birth of the Nation 147 

victory of the Virginia backwoodsmen over Cornstalk, the 
Shawnee chieftain, at the mouth of the Kanawha River, had 
secured the rich lands of the present state of Kentucky against 
Indian domination. And in November, 1776 (while Washington's 
dwindling army was fleeing across the state of New Jersey), the 
decisive repulse of the Cherokees from the Watauga settlements 
opened to the pioneers the equally rich lands of Tennessee. 

The victories on the Kanawha and the Watauga, fought against 184. The 
the Indian foe, by men in the fringed hunting shirt of deer- of^hese vie- 
skin and by the rude tactics of Indian warfare, have often gone tones 
unmentioned, while unimportant skirmishes on the seaboard, be- 
tween uniformed soldiers, commanded by officers in gold braid, 
have been described in detail. But in their effects on our country's 
history these Indian fights, with the later victories north of 
the Ohio to which they opened the way, deserve to rank with 
Saratoga and Yorktown. For if the latter victories decided that 
America should take her place among the nations of the world, 
the former proclaimed that the new nation would not be content 
to be shut up in a little strip of seacoast, but had set its face 
westward to possess the whole continent. 

The settlers in Kentucky and Tennessee numbered only a i85. The 
few hundred at the outbreak of the American Revolution, but the western 
they were intensely democratic and patriotic. In May, 1775, settlements 
delegates from four " stations " in Kentucky '' met in a wide 
field of white clover, under the shade of a monstrous elm," and 
made wise laws for their infant colony. When a party of campers 
in the heart of Kentucky heard the news of the first battle of 
the Revolution, they enthusiastically christened their camp 
" Lexington." In the Watauga settlement the Tories were 
drummed out of camp several months before the Declaration 
of Independence was adopted. Soon after that event Ken- 
tucky, though a county of Virginia, petitioned Congress to be 
received as the fourteenth state of the Union, and sent a dele- 
gation to Patrick Henry, governor of Virginia, to offer that 
state the services of '' a respectable body of prime riflemen." 



148 Sepa7'atioit of the Colonies from E^tgland 

186. George One of these delegates was George Rogers Clark, a young 
Rogers Clark yjj-ginian scarcely past twenty, with a dash of Cavalier blood 

in his veins, — tall, straight, and stanchly built, " with unquailing 
blue eyes that looked out from under heavy brows." As a sur- 
veyor on the upper Ohio Clark had cast in his lot with the 
Kentucky settlers, where he soon became a leader, like that 
other young Virginia surveyor of gentle blood, — tall, sturdy, 
and blue-eyed, — who twenty years before had led the first ex- 
pedition to make good English claims to the region beyond the 
Alleghenies. On his return to Kentucky, Clark conceived and 
executed a plan of campaign which entitles him to be called the 
Washington of the West. Sending spies across the Ohio to the 
Illinois country, he learned that the Indians and French there 
were only lukewarm in their allegiance to their new English 
masters. He therefore determined to seize this huge territory 
for the patriot cause, and in the autumn of 1777 again traveled 
over the Wilderness Road to lay his plans before Governor 
Patrick Henry. 

187. Clark Henry, Jefferson, Wyeth, Mason, and other, promin^t Virgin- 
northwestern ians approved Clark's bold scheme, but the utmost that the 

territory, s\.2X^ could do for him was to authorize him to raise 31:0 
I 778-1 779 

men and advance him $1200 in depreciated currency. It was 
a poor start for the conquest of a region as large as New 
England, New York, and Pennsylvania combined, but Clark 
belonged to the men of genius who persist in accomplish- 
ing tasks which men of judgment pronounce impossible. The 
story of his exploits reads more like one of James Fenimore 
Cooper's fanciful Indian tales than like sober history ; how he 
surprised the post at Kaskaskia without a blow, and, by in- 
trepid assurance and skillful diplomacy, induced the French and 
Indians of the Mississippi Valley to transfer their allegiance 
from the British Empire to the new American republic ; how, 
when he learned that Colonel Hamilton, the British commander 
at Detroit, had seized the fort of Vincennes on the Wabash, he 
immediately marched his men in mid-winter over two hundred 



The Birth of the Nation 



149 



miles across the " drowned lands " of the Wabash, sometimes 
wading through icy water up to their chins, sometimes shivering 
supperless on some bleak knoll, but always courageous and con- 
fident, until he appeared before the post of Vincennes and sum- 
moned the wonderstricken Hamilton to an immediate and uncon- 
ditional surrender (February, 1779). The capture of Vincennes 
was the deathblow of the British power north of the Ohio. 




Clark's Virginians crossing the " Drowned Lands " 

It would be difficult to overestimate the services of Boone, 
of Robertson, of Sevier, and, above all, of George Rogers Clark, 
in winning the western region just at the moment when the colo- 
nies on the seaboard were establishing and defending their inde- 
pendence. When the negotiations for peace with Great Britain 
were opened, it was the achievement of these pioneer conquer- 
ors that emboldened the new American republic to insist on the 
Mississippi instead of the Alleghenies as its boundary on the 
west, and the Great Lakes instead of the Ohio as its boundary 
on the north. 



150 Separation of tJie Colonies from England 

Peace 

When the news of Comwallis's surrender at Yorktown reached 
Lord North, he threw up his hands and exclaimed, " My God ! 
it is all over." The stubborn king was not so ready to read in 
Yorktown the doom of his tenacious policy of coercion. Always 
mistaking the satisfaction of his royal will for the salvation of 
the British Empire, he stormed against the rising sentiment for 
peace with America, and wrote letters of petulant bombast to 
his prime minister, threatening to resigTi the British crown and 
retire to his ancestral domains in Germany. But threats and 
entreaties were of no avail. The nation was sick of the rule 
of the '' King's Friends," and the early months of 1782 saw 
George III compelled to part with Lord North, and receive 
into his service, if not into his confidence, the Whig statesmen 
(Pitt, Fox, Burke) whose sympathy for America had been con- 
stant and outspoken. Diplomatic agents were sent to Paris to 
discuss terms of peace with the American commissioners, Jay, 
Franklin, and John Adams. 

The situation was a very complicated one. The United States, 
by the treaty of alliance with France in 1778, had pledged itself 
not to make a separate peace with England. Then the French 
had drawn Spain into the war, with the promise of recovering 
for her the island of Jamaica in the West Indies (taken by 
Oliver Cromwell's fleet in 1655) and the rock fortress of Gib- 
raltar (captured by the English in 1704). The Franco- American 
alliance had been successful, as we have seen, in defeating the 
British invasion of the Atlantic seaboard, thus assuring the inde- 
pendence of the United States. But the bolder Franco-Spanish 
design of destroying the naval supremacy of Great Britain and 
dividing up her colonial empire had entirely failed. It soon 
became evident to the American diplomats at Paris that France 
was scheming to find consolation for her defeated ally, Spain, at 
the expense of her victorious ally, America. In fact, Vergennes, 
the French minister, had prepared a map on which the United 



The Birth of the Nation 151 

States figured as the same old colonial strip between the AI- 
leghenies and the sea, while the western region north of the 
Ohio was to be restored to England, and that south of the Ohio 
to the Indians, partly under American and partly under Spanish 
protection (see map). Thus the new republic was to be robbed 
of the fruits of the labors of Boone, Sevier, Robertson, and 
Clark, and the Mississippi was to be a Spanish stream. '' This 
court is interested in separating us from Great Britain," wrote 
Jay from Paris, " but it is not their interest that we should 
become a great and formidable people." 

Yet we were greatly beholden to France. Her aid in men, 190. our 
ships, and money had been so timely and generous that it is franc'e^^^* ** 
almost certain that without it the American cause would have 
been lost. The Continental Congress, resorting to every possible 
device, — requisitions on the states, confiscation of Tory estates, 
domestic loans, even a national lottery, — could raise only a 
small fraction of the money needed to carry on the war. By 
1778 it had issued $63,500,000 of paper money, which was 
rapidly coming to be worth hardly more than the -paper on 
which it was printed. The bracing effect on our languishing 
finances of the arrival of 2,500,000 francs in French gold 
can easily be imagined. Our commissioners in Paris, there- 
fore, were instructed by Congress not to proceed in the peace 
negotiations without the consent and concurrence of the French 
ministry. 

The critical question before Jay, Adams, and Franklin was 191. The 
whether or not they should obey their instructions from Con- makesasepa- 
gress and refuse to conclude a favorable peace with the willing ^^^^^^^^ 
Whig ministry of England, merely because France was anxious land, 1783 
to rob the new republic of her western conquests and recompense 
Spain in the Mississippi Valley for what she had failed to get 
in the West Indies and in the Mediterranean. The commis- 
sioners, following Jay's advice, disobeyed Congress, violated the 
treaty of alliance with France, and concluded the peace with 
England alone, thereby securing the unbroken continent from 



152 Separation of the Colonies from England 

the Atlantic to the Mississippi. But it took all the tact and 
shrewd suavity of Benjamin Franklin to make the French 
ministry accept the terms of the treaty with even tolerable 
good grace. 

There were difficult points in the negotiations with England 
too, despite the desire of both sides to come to terms. The British 
ministry readily acknowledged the independence of the United 
States, and made but slight protest against its extension west- 
ward to the Mississippi. England also conceded to the United 
States the valuable privilege of sharing the Newfoundland fish- 
eries. But the questions of debts due to English merchants from 
the colonists before the war, and the treatment of the American 
Loyalists, or Tories, were very troublesome. The American Con- 
gress had no money of its own, and had no authority to dispose 
of the funds of the states. It could not, therefore, give the British 
ministry any sufficient guarantee that the debts would be paid. 
John Adams might assure William Pitt with some asperity and 
indignation that the Americans had " no idea of cheating any- 
body," but the declaration looked to Pitt remarkably like Mr. 
Adams's private opinion merely. This matter of the debts might 
have frustrated the peace negotiations entirely, had not the 
British supplemented the American assurances of good will by 
the secret plan to hold on to the valuable fur-trading posts along 
the Great Lakes from Oswego to Mackinaw until the debts 
were paid. 
193. The Still more delicate was the question of the treatment of the 

LoySs! w^ Loyalists. Tens of thousands of the American colonists had been 
Tories opposed to the war with the mother country, — some out of 

prudent anxiety lest the war would entail business ruin and 
the general disorder, others from an optimistic belief that in 
spite of '' Grenville's well-meant blunder and Townshend's ma- 
licious challenge," the situation could be " rectified without the 
disruption of the Empire." The more ardent of these Loyalists 
denounced the Congress in unmeasured terms as a collection of 
quarrelsome, pettifogging lawyers and mechanics; and when 



The Birth of the Nation 153 

the Declaration of Independence put them in the position of 
traitors, thousands of them entered the British armies. To 
abandon these allies, who, at the sacrifice of their property and 
reputation in America, had obeyed King George's call to all 
loyal citizens to aid in putting down rebellion, seemed to the 
British ministry an unpardonable piece of ingratitude and in- 
justice. It thought that the American Congress should restore 
to these Loyalists their confiscated estates (valued at some 
$20,000,000) or reimburse them with the territory north of 
the Ohio, which Clark had conquered. 

But in the breasts of the American patriots the thought of the 194. The 
Tories roused bitter memories. It was not alone their jibes and view'*^^° 
insults, their vilification of the character of Washington and his 
associates, their steady encouragement of desertion and mutiny 
in the American army, or their own appearance in the uniform 
of the king's troops. Congress remembered how, in the dark 
winter of 1776, when Washington was vainly imploring the 
farmers of New Jersey for food for his destitute soldiers, the 
Tory squires of the state were selling Lord Howe their rich 
harvests at good prices, to feed the British invaders ; and how 
in the still darker winter that followed, while Washington's 
starving and shivering army at Valley Forge was losing more 
men by desertion daily than it was gaining by recruiting, the 
Tory drawing-rooms of Philadelphia were gay with festivities in 
honor of the British ofBcers. It was a hard thing to ask the 
new country, already burdened with a war debt of $60,000,- 
000, with its political life to establish on a firm basis and its 
industries and commerce to organize anew, to recompense the 
men who had done their utmost to wreck the patriot cause, 
— men whom even the careful tongue of Washington called 
" detestable parricides ! " 

The British ministry finally accepted the assurance of the 195. The 
American commissioners that Congress would recommend to EngSndV* 
the states the restitution of the property of such Loyalists as *®™^ 
had not borne arms against the United States, and would put no 




Group of Famous Revolutionary Buildings 

Faneuil Hall, Boston ; Old South Church, Boston ; Independence Hall, 

Philadelphia ; Old State House, Boston 

154 



The Birth of the Nation 155 

hindrance in the way of the collection of debts due British sub- 1 
jects. The British government itself came to the aid of the ' 
'' active " Loyalists, granting them liberal pensions and land in 
Canada. Europe was amazed at England's generosity. " The 
English buy the peace rather than make it," wrote Vergennes ; 
'' their concessions as to boundaries, the fisheries, the Loyalists, 
exceed everything I had thought possible." It was a complete 
if a* tardy triumph of that feeling of sympathy for men of com- 
mon blood, common language, traditions, and institutions, across 
the seas, which had been so long struggling to find a voice in 
the corrupt councils of the English court. 

On the eighteenrti of April, 1783, the eighth anniversary of 196. The re- 
the night when Paul Revere roused the minutemen of Lexing- Washington, 
ton to meet the British regulars on the village green, Washington December, 
proclaimed hostilities at an end ; and, by the splendid example 
of his single-minded patriotism, persuaded men and officers to 
go to their homes '' without a farthing in their pockets," confi- 
dent in the power and good will of their new government to 
reward them according to their deserts. The final articles of 
peace were signed September 3, 1783. On November 23 the 
last British regulars in America sailed out of New York harbor, 
and a few days later Washington bade his officers an affection- 
ate farewell in the long hall of Fraunces' Tavern, and retired to 
his home at Mount Vernon, there, as he hoped, " to glide gently 
down the stream of time until he rested with his fathers." 

REFERENCES 

The Declaration of Independence : C. H. Van Tyne, The American 
Revolution (American Nation Series), chaps, iv-vi ; John Fiske, The 
American Revohition^ Vol. I, chap, iv; Justin Winsor, Nan-ative and 
Critical History of America^ Vol. VI, chap, iii; Cambridge Modem His- 
tory, Vol. VII, chap, vi ; G. Otto Trevelyan, The American Revolution^ 
Vol. II, Part I, pp. 105-158 ; A. B. Hart, American History told by Con- 
temporaries, Vol. II, Nos. 184-188. 

The Revolutionary War : Van Tyne, chaps, vii-xvii ; Trevelyan, 
Vols. I-III (to 1777); Fiske, Vols. I, II; W. M. Sloane, The French 



156 Separatio7t of the Colonies from England 

War and the Revolutio7i^ chaps, xx-xxviii ; Theodore Roosevelt, Tht 
Winning of the West, Vols. II, III; H. C. Lodge, The Story of the Revo- 
lution ; William H. English, The Conquest of the Country Northwest 
of the Ohio ; W. H. Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century 
(ed. Woodburn), chap. ii. 

Peace : John Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, chap, i; 
A. C. McLaughlin, The Confederation and the Constitution (Am. Nation), 
chaps, i-iii; Hart, Vol. II, Nos. 215-220; Lecky (ed. Woodburn), 
chap, iv ; Winsor, Vol. VII, chap, ii ; William MacDonald, Select 
Documents of United States History, iyy6~i86i, No. 3 (for text of treaty). 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1 . Thomas Paine's Contribution to American Independence : Trevelyan, 
Vol. II, Part I, pp. 147-155; Hart, Vol. II, Nos. 159, 186; Van Tynl, 
pp. 61-65, 129 ; M. C. Tyler, Literajy History of the American Revolu- 
tion, Vol. I, pp. 452-471 ; M. D. Conway', Life of Thomas Paine (use 
index). 

2. Latayette in the American Revolution : Old South Leaflets, Nos. 97, 
98; Fiske, The American Revolution, Vol.11, pp. 206-208, 234, 240- 
243, 280-295 ; Sloane, pp. 264, 292, 324-344. 

3. The Tories: Tyler, Vol. I, pp. 293-313; Trevelyan, Vol. II, 
Part II, pp. 226-240; Hart, Vol.11, Nos. 166-169; Van Tyne, The 
Loyalists in the American Revolution, pp. 1-59; Tyler, The Party of the 
Loyalists {Americait Historical Reviezu, Vol. I, pp. 24 ff.). 

4. Daniel Boone, a Pioneer to the West: A. B. Hurlburt, Boone's 
Wilderness Road, pp. 1-47 ; H. A. Bruce, The Ro7nance of American 
Expansion, pp. 1-24; Roosevelt, Vol.1, pp. 134-136; J. R. Spears, 
The History of the Mississippi Valley, pp. 183-208 ; R. G. Thwaites, 
Life of Daniel Boone. 

5. Washington's Trials with the Army and Congress: Fiske, The 
American Revolution, Vol. II, pp. 24-46, 62-72; The Critical Period of 
Ame7'ican History, pp. 101-119; Hart, Vol. II, Nos. 174, 195, 198, 206; 
Sloane, pp. 370-378 ; Van Tyne, The American Revolution, pp. 236- 
247 ; Old South Leaflets, No. 47. 



PART III. THE i\EW REPUBLIC 



PART III. THE NEW REPUBLIC 



CHAPTER VI 

THE CONSTITUTION 

The Critical Period 

With the Revolutionary War the first great epoch of Ameri- 197. End of 
can history, the colonial period, came to an end. The English period 
colonies became an independent nation, and the political con- 
nections with the great British Empire were severed. Royal 
governors, councilors, judges, customs officers, and agents dis- 
appeared, and their places were taken by men chosen by the 
people of the new states, — public servants instead of public 
masters. Fortunately the break with Great Britain had not come 
before the serious and aggressive French rivals of the English 
in the New World had been subdued, and the country from the 
Atlantic to the Mississippi had been won for men of English 
speech, blood, tradition, and law. 

The two great facts of the separation of the colonies from 198. Tasks 
England, and the possession of a vast w^estern territory to be new republic 
settled and organized, determined the chief activities of the new 
republic. First of all,, the United States, unless that name were 
to be a mere mockery, must devise a form of government to in- 
sure a ndtional union ; ^and, in the second place, the national 
government must be extended westward as the new domain 
beyond the mountains developed. We have studied the winning 
of American independence. We turn now to a study of the 
American Union. 

159 



i6o 



The New Republic 



199. The Thirteen years elapsed between the Declaration of Independ- 

authorityof ^^^ce (1776) and the inauguration of George Washington as 
co^ress, ^j.g^ President of the United States (1789). During those years 
our country was governed by a Congress, — a body which must 
be carefully distinguished from our present national Congress. 
To-day Congress means a group of about 500 men, elected by 
the people and the legislatures of the various states, to meet 
in annual session at the Capitol at Washington and make laws 
for our country. The authority of Congress extends over every 
citizen of the United States ; its sphere includes such important 
powers as levying taxes, regulating commerce, making war and 
peace, coining money, and admitting new states to the Union. But 
the Congress of 1775-1788 was a far different thing. It con- 
sisted of a group of delegations of from two to seven members 
apiece, sent by each state to a general meeting at Philadelphia. 
Until a few months before the surrender of Cornwallis at York- 
town this Congress was without legal authority, or any written 
constitution defining its powers. Its members, acting on instruc- 
tions from their states, or relying on the indorsement of their 
states, assumed very important functions of government. They 
raised and officered an army, assessed the states for its support, 
declared the colonies independent of England, borrowed money 
abroad on the credit of the new United States, rejected the British 
offer of reconciliation in 1778, and concluded treaties of com- 
merce and alliance with France. But the Continental Congress 
could assume these vast powers of government without express 
authority only because the pressure of war united the colonies 
for the moment and made a central directing body an immediate 
necessity. For the Union to endure after the pressure of war 
was over, a regular national government had to be established. 
About a year before the colonies declared their independence 
Benjamin Franklin, a lifelong advocate of colonial union, sub- 
tion, 1777-1781 mitted to this Congress a draft of '' Articles of Confederation 
and Perpetual Union" (July 21, 1775). But too many of the 
members of Congress still hoped for a peaceful settlement with 



^ The Constitution i6i 

England to make this plan acceptable. When independence was 
declared, however, the necessity of forming a government be- 
came obvious. In response to a clause in Lee's famous motion 
of independence a committee of one from each of the thirteen 
colonies, with John Dickinson of Pennsylvania as chairman, was 
appointed " to prepare a plan of confederation and transmit it 
to the respective colonies for their consideration and approba- 
tion." The Articles of Confederation were duly composed, and, 
being approved by Congress in November, 1777, were sent to 
the various states for ratification. But more than three years 
elapsed before the last of the states, Maryland, assented to the 
Articles and so made them the law of the land (March i, 1781). 

The delay of Maryland in accepting the Articles of Confedera- 201. The 
tion was due to an important cause and resulted in a great benefit western^iands 

to the nation. The states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virsdnia, ^ ^®^®° ^^ 

' ' ^ ' the new- 

North and South Carolina, and Georgia claimed land between the states 

Alleghenies and the Mississippi by virtue of their old colonial 
charters, which gave them indefinite westward extension. Vir- 
ginia's claim, which overlapped that of both Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, was strengthened by the fact that George Rogers 
Clark had actually conquered the vast territory north of the Ohio 
under commission from the governor of Virginia. New York also 
maintained a claim to part of the same disputed territory on ac- 
count of a treaty with the Iroquois Indians, which had put those 
tribes under her protection (1768). The states whose western 
boundaries were fixed by their charters, like Maryland, New 
Jersey, and Pennsylvania, were at a disadvantage, since they 
had no western lands with which to reward their veterans of the 
Revolution. Maryland, therefore, insisted, before accepting the 
Articles of Confederation, that the states with western claims 
should surrender them to the United States, and that all the land 
between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi should be national 
domain. After some parleying, New York, in 1781, led the way 
in surrendering its claims. Virginia, with noble generosity, gave 
up her far better founded claims to the whole region north of 



Confedera- 
tion 



162 The New Republic 

the Ohio, in 1784. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Car- 
olinas soon followed suit, although Georgia, partly on account 
of complications with Spain, maintained her claims as far west 
as the Mississippi until 1802. By these cessions the United 
States acfjuired an immense national domain, the sale of which 
could be applied to the payment of the Revolutionary War 
debt, and from whose territory new states could be formed. It 
was the beginning of a truly national power, and honor is due 
to the state of Maryland for insisting on this fair and wise policy. 
202. criti- The Articles of Confederation, though announcing a " perpet- 
Articies of ual union " and a " firm league of friendship " of the thirteen 
states, remained in force only eight years, and failed utterly to 
bring strength or harmony into the Union. They were but an 
experiment in government. The defects of the Articles may be 
summed up in a single clause : they failed to give the Congress 
of the United States enough authority to run the government. 
At the very outset they declared that " each state retained its 
sovereignty, freedom, and independence," and all through them 
the unwillingness to force the states to part with any of their 
power is evident. For example, Congress pledged the faith of 
the United States to pay the war debt, yet it had neither the power 
to demand, nor the machinery to collect, a single penny from any 
citizen or state of the Union. It could only make " requisitions " 
on the states, and its repeated requests for money met with 
meager response. Gouverneur Morris called it a "government 
by supplication." The budget for 1 781-1782 was $9,000,000. 
Of this Congress negotiated for $4,000,000 by a foreign loan, 
and assessed the states for the other $5,000,000. After a year's 
delay some $450,000 of the $5,000,000 asked for was paid in, 
and not a dollar came from Georgia, South Carolina, or Dela- 
ware. So, from year to year, the "government by supplica- 
tion " worried along, asking millions and getting a few hundred 
thousands, in imminent danger of going bankrupt by failing 
to pay the interest on its debt, with scarcely enough revenue, 
as one statesman said with pardonable exaggeration, " to buy 



The Constitution 163 

stationery for its clerks or pay the salary of a doorkeeper." The 
impotence of Congress in financial matters was only one example 
of the general inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation. They 
put on the central government certain grave responsibilities, 
such as defending the land from its foes, maintaining its credit, 
preserving order at home, and securing friendships abroad ; and 
yet they gave the central government no means of enforcing 
obedience to its will. Congress had no executive power, no 
national courts of justice in which to condemn offenders against 
its laws, no control of commerce, no machinery of taxation, no 
check on the indiscriminate issue by the states of money of 
differing values, no efficient army or navy. 

It is no wonder that so weak a government failed to inspire 203. our 
respect abroad or obedience at home. England, in defiance of fgJSTby 
the treaty of 1783, still held the fur-trading posts of the North- the European 
west, and, taking advantage of the commercial confusion of 
thirteen separate tariff codes in the United States, refused to 
admit us on fair terms to a share in her maritime trade. The 
French ministers told Jefferson plainly in Paris that it was 
impossible to recognize the Congress as a government. The 
Spanish governor at New Orleans offered the western fron- 
tiersmen the use of the Mississippi if they would renounce 
their allegiance to the United States and come under the flag 
of Spain. The thrifty merchants of Amsterdam were on tenter- 
hooks for fear that the interest on their loans to the new re- 
public would not be paid. And finally even the Mohammedan 
pirates of the Barbary States in northern Africa levied black- 
mail on our vessels which ventured into the Mediterranean. The 
government under the Articles of Confederation '' had touched 
that lowest point of ignominy where it confessed its inability to 
protect the lives and property of its citizens." 

At home anarchy was imminent. The glowing sentences in 204. The 
which patriots on the eve of the Revolution had declared them- an?rchy*at 
selves no longer Virginians or Carolinians, but henceforth ^0°^® 
Americans, were forgotten when peace was made. The states. 



164 The New Republic 

with their conflicting commercial and agricultural interests, their 
diverse social and religious inheritances from early colonial days, 
their strong sense of local independence, nurtured by long de- 
fense against British officials and strengthened by the meager- 
ness of intercolonial trade and travel, were jealous to preserve 
their individuality unimpaired. They indulged in petty tariff 
wars against one another, the defeated party often seeking a 
spiteful consolation in refusing to pay its contribution to Con- 
gress. Boundary disputes were frequent and fierce. The farmers 
of New York and Connecticut fought over the region of Ver- 
mont like bands of Indians on the warpath, "with all the' 
horrors of ambuscade and arson " ; Pennsylvania allowed the 
Indians of the Wyoming valley to scalp New Englanders as 
" intruders." Congress was powerless to prevent states from 
plunging into the folly of issuing large sums of paper money 
to ease the debtor class. It looked on in distressed impotence 
while thriving towns like Newport were brought to the edge 
of ruin by wild financial legislation,^ and the ancient and digni- 
fied commonwealth of Massachusetts had to subdue an armed 
mob of 1500 rebels of the debtor class, led by a captain of 
the Revolution named Daniel Shays, who closed the courts at 
Worcester and attacked the United States arsenal at Springfield 
(1786-1787). 
205. The As the weakness of Congress became more evident its dig- 
congiess nity declined. The foremost statesmen preferred to serve their 
own states rather than to sit in a national assembly without 
power. Each state was entitled to seven representatives in Con- 
gress by the terms of the Articles, making a house of ninety-one 
members. But there were seldom more than a quarter of that 
number in attendance. Some states went unrepresented for 

1 A French visitor to America during this distressing period saw in Newport 
"groups of idle men standing with folded arms at the corners of the streets, 
houses falling to ruin, miserable shops with nothing but a few coarse stuffs, grass 
growing in the public square in front of the court of justice, and rags stuffed in 
the windows or hung on hideous women " ( Brissot de Warville, Travels in America, 
ed. of i79i,P- 145)- 



The Co7tstitution 165 

months at a time. Only twenty members were in session to re- 
ceive George Washington and to express to him the country's 
gratitude for his invaluable services on the most solemn occa- 
sion of his surrender of the command of the American army in 
December, 1783. Only twenty-three assembled the next month 
to ratify the treaty of peace with England. Finally, the attend- 
ance dwindled away to a few scattering representatives, until 
from October, 1 788, to April, 1789, not enough members assem- 
bled to make a quorum, and there was absolutely no United 
States government. 

It is a relief to be able to point to one piece of statesmanlike 206. The 

11 1 .1 . .. • ^ Northwest 

and constructive work done by the poor tottenng government ordinance, 
of the Confederation in these dismal years, fitly called " the crit- J^^^ ^3, 1787 
ical period of American history." The large domain between 
the Great Lakes and the Ohio, which had become the property 
of the United States by the abandonment of the claims of the 
states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia, 
was organized by Congress into the Northwest Territory, July 
13, 1787. The act of organization, called the Northwest Ordi- 
nance, placed the territory under a governor and three judges 
until the population should be large enough for real represent- 
ative government. It also provided that the citizens of the ter- 
ritory should enjoy complete political and religious liberty, that 
a system of free public education should be introduced, that 
eventually from three to five new states should be carved out 
of the territory, and that slavery should forever be excluded from 
the domain.^ Within a year colonists from Massachusetts, sent 
out by the Ohio Company, founded the town of Marietta in what 
is now southern Ohio, and, with the establishment of county 
government and courts, the Northwest Ordinance was put into 
operation (April, 1788). 



1 This territory was essentially the same as that reserved in Vergennes' plan 
of 1782 for further negotiations between England and the United States (see 
map, opposite p. 152). Out of it were formed later the states of Ohio, Indiana, 
Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with a small piece of Minnesota. 



1 66 The New Republic 

As the first law for the government of national territory, this 
ordinance declared that the extension of the power of the United 
States into the western wilderness was to be at the same time 
the extension of the blessings of enlightenment, tolerance, and 
freedom. Daniel Webster, in a speech in the United States Sen- 
ate forty years later, said, " I doubt whether any single law of 
any lawgiver ancient or modern has produced effects of more 
distinct and lasting character than the Ordinance of 1787." 

*' A More Perfect Union " 

The inadequacy of the Articles of Confederation was recog- 
nized from the beginning by some of the wisest of our states- 
men. These Articles had been in operation (if one can speak of 
their " operating " at all) little more than a month when James 
Madison of Virginia proposed (April, 1781) that they should be 
amended so as to give the United States " full authority to em- 
ploy force by sea as well as by land to compel any delinquent 
state to fulfill its federal obligations," or, in other words, to pay 
its share of the federal assessment. After the peace with Eng- 
land, two years later, Washington wrote in a circular letter to 
the governors of the states, " There should be lodged some- 
where a supreme power to regulate the general concerns of 
the Confederated Republic, without which this Union cannot be 
of long duration." Again in 1 784, he wrote, '' I predict the worst 
consequences for a half-starved limping government, always 
moving on crutches, and tottering at every step." Finally, Con- 
gress itself officially proclaimed its inability to conduct the gov- 
ernment under its meager powers, by supporting a proposal 
for a convention of delegates from all the states to revise the 
Articles of Confederation. 

The proposal had arisen out of an economic difficulty. Mary- 
land and Virginia disputed the control of the Potomac River, 
and commissioners from these two states met as guests of 
Washington at Mount Vernon, in 1785, to setde the matter. In 
the course of the discussion it developed that the commercial 



The Constitution i6y 

interests of Pennsylvania and Delaware were also concerned, 
and the Virginia commissioners suggested that all the states be 
invited to send delegates to a convention at Annapolis, Maryland, 
the next year, to consider the commercial interests of the United 
States as a whole. But no sooner had the delegates of five 
states met at Annapolis in 1786 than they took a further im- 
portant step. The New Jersey delegation had brought instruc- 
tions to discuss the commercial question and other important 
matters. Alexander Hamilton of New York, impressed by this 
phrase, proposed that still another convention of all the states be 
called at Philadelphia the next year for the general revision of 
the Articles of Confederation. Even before Congress sanctioned 
this proposal six of the states had appointed delegates, and 
after the approval of Congress was given six more states fell 
into line. Only little Rhode Island, fearing that her commerce 
would be ruined by national control and her representation over- 
shadowed by the larger states in Congress, refused to send ^ 
delegates to the convention. ^ 

It was an extraordinary array of political talent that was 210. person, 
brought together in the convention which met in Independence constitu- 
Hall at Philadelphia in May, 1787, to devise a worthy govern- tionai con- 
ment for the United States. John Adams and Thomas Jeffer- Philadelphia, 
son were in Europe, as ministers to the courts of England and ^' ^^ ^ 
France respectively. John Jay was foreign secretary in Con- 
gress, and Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, the foremost 
agitators of the American Revolution, were both opposed to 
strengthening the central government. But with these five ex- 
ceptions the greatest men of the country were at the Philadel- 
phia convention : Washington, Madison, Randolph, and Mason 
from Virginia ; Franklin, Wilson, Robert and Gouverneur Morris 
from Pennsylvania ; Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth from 
Connecticut ; Elbridge Gerry and Rufus King from Massachu- 
setts ; John Rutledge and Charles Pinckney from South Caro- 
lina ; John Dickinson from Delaware ; and Alexander Hamilton 
from New York. Washington was chosen president of the 



l68 



TJie Neiv Republic 



211. The 
" Virginia 
Plan " for a 
national gov- 
ernment 



212. The 
" New Jersey 
Plan " for a 
revised con- 
federation 



213. The 
extremists on 
both sides 



convention. The sessions, which lasted from May 25 to Septem- 
ber 17, were secret; but the methodical Madison took full 
notes of the debates, writing them out carefully every evening 
in the form of a journal. When he died fifty years later, — the 
last survivor of that remarkable gathering of men, — his widow 
sold the manuscript of this valuable journal, with other impor- 
tant Madison papers, to Congress for $30,000, and the journal 
was published at Washington in 1840. 

The convention proceeded to give a very liberal interpreta- 
tion to its instructions to " amend " the Articles of Confederal 
tion. The Virginia delegation brought in a plan for the entire 
remodeling of the government. There were to be three inde- 
pendent departments, — the legislative, the executive, and the 
judicial. The legislature was to consist of a House of Represent- 
atives elected by the people and a Senate elected by the House. 
The government therefore was to be national, deriving its power 
directly from the people of the nation at large, rather than a 
confederation, depending for its existence on the will of the 
various state legislatures. 

The small states, fearing that they would lose their individu- 
ality entirely in a national legislature elected in proportion to 
the population, supported a counterplan introduced by Gov- 
ernor Paterson of New Jersey. The New Jersey plan proposed 
to amend the Articles of Confederation, as did the Virginia 
plan, by the creation of executive and judicial departments and 
by giving Congress control of commerce and power to raise 
taxes. But the representatives in Congress were still to be repre- 
sentatives of the states and not of the- people of the nation, and 
each state, large or small, was to have an equal number of 
delegates. In short, the existing confederation was to be per- 
petuated, with increased powers, to be sure, but still without the 
strength of a true national federation. 

Then there were extremists on both sides. To some the 
Virginia plan appeared too conservative, and to others the New 
Jersey plan seemed too radical. The latter, interpreting their 



The Constitution 169 

instructions to "amend" the Articles very literally, left the 
convention and went home when they saw that it was the in- 
tention of the delegations to change the nature of the govern- 
ment. On the other hand, Alexander Hamilton advocated a 
government in which the chief executive and the senators 
should hold office for life (like the English king and lords), 
and in which the former should have power not only of veto- 
ing state laws, as suggested in the Virginia plan, but also of 
appointing and removing the governors of the states, thus 
reducing the states to mere administrative departments of the 
national government, like the shires in England or the depart- 
ments in France. 

The extremists found little following, however, in the conven- 214. a com- 
tion. The great struggle was between the Virginia and the reaS'edon 

New Jersey plans ; that is, between a national federation and a ^^® ^^^^ ^\ 
•> J r ^ 7 government 

mere confederacy of states.^ And on this question the conven- 
tion threatened to go to pieces, the federalists declaring that 
they would never consent to a government in which their states 
should be swallowed up, and the nationalists with equal fervor 
declaring that they would not support a government in which 
the will of a large majority of the people of the United States 
could be thwarted by the selfish action of one or two small 
states, as it had been under the Articles of Confederation. 
Only the tact, patience, and persuasion of a few veteran states- 
men like Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, and Roger Sher- 
man, and the incomparable political wisdom and diligence in 
debate of James Madison, " the Father of the Constitution," 
finally succeeded in bringing about a series of compromises on 
the most important questions at issue. The states, large and 
small, were to preserve their equality of representation in the 

1 Unfortunately we have no single terms in our language to define this very 
important difference in the idea of government, like the German Bnndesstaat 
(a leagued state) and Staaicitbund (a league of states). From the very beginning 
of our government till to-day the question of the relative power of the nation 
(the Bund) and the states (the Staaten) has been warmly debated by the cham- 
pions of the two systems. 



I/O The New Republic 

upper House of Congress (the Senate), while the members of 
the lower House (the House of Representatives) were to be 
elected by the people of the states, each state having a number 
of representatives in proportion to its population. As repre- 
sentatives of the people, the members of the lower House were 
to have control of the public purse, with the sole right to raise 
a revenue or levy taxes. 

215. Further When the great question of the general character of our 
compromises i i , i • r • i ,i 
between the government was settled by this nrst compromise, the other 

the^southern P^ii^ts of difference, most of which concerned the conflicting inter- 
states ests of the North and the South, were easily adjusted. The 
Southern states demanded that their slaves (though they were 
not citizens) should be counted as population in the apportion- 
ment of representatives in Congress, that Congress should not 
interfere with the slave trade, and that a two-thirds vote of the 
House of Representatives should be necessary for passing 
tariff laws. Compromises were arrived at on all these ques- 
tions. Three fifths of the slaves were to be included in making 
up the apportionment for Congress, so that a state with loo,- 
ooo white inhabitants and 50,000 slaves would be reckoned as 
having a population of 130,000. Congress was not to disturb 
the slave trade for twenty years, though it might levy a tax not 
exceeding ten dollars a head on slaves imported into the states. 
Finally, tariff laws were to be passed by a simple majority vote 
in the House, but no duties were to be levied on exports. 

216. The The convention, after voting that the new Constitution should 
ratification of . „ . , , , . , 

the constitu- go mto eitect as soon as nine states had accepted it, sent the 
document to Congress, and Congress transmitted it to the sev- 
eral states for ratification. Delaware was the first to ratify the 
new Constitution, by a unanimous vote, December 7, 1787. 
By the twenty-first of the following June eight other states had 
ratified in the following order : Pennsylvania, New Jersey, 
Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina, 
New Hampshire ; and the Constitution thereupon became the 
supreme law for those states. Virginia and New York followed 



tion 



The Constitution 



171 



soon, ratifying by very narrow margins after bitter struggles 
in their conventions. North Carolina did not come under " the 
federal roof" until November, 1789, after Washington had 
been President for over six months. Rhode Island did not 
even send any delegates to the Constitutional Convention, and 
did not call any convention in the state to consider ratifying 
the Constitution, until the new Congress threatened to treat the 
state as a foreign nation and levy tariff duties on her commerce 
with the other states. Then she came to terms and entered the 
Union, May 29, 1790. 

The Ninth PILLJR erected ! 

" The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, fiiall be fufiitlent forthe«IUblifli' 
ment of this Conftitution, between the Stales lo ratifying the fame." Art. am. 

INCIPIENT MJGNI FROCEDERE MENSES. 

gylf it is not up ^^fl Th€ Attraction muft 
be irre{iflii}]« 




The Progress of Ratification 
From an Old Chronicle 



Some of the states (Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia) rati- 217. Hard 
fied the Constitution unanimously, but in others (Massachu- ratification 
setts, Virginia,. Pennsylvania, New York) there was a severe 
struggle. A change of 10 votes in the Massachusetts conven- 
tion of 355 members, or of 6 votes in the Virginia conven- 
tion of 168, or of 2 votes in the New York convention of 
57 would have defeated the Constitution in these states. In 
Pennsylvania it seemed as though the days of the Stamp 
Act had returned. There was rioting and burning in effigy, 
and a war of brickbats as well as of pamphlets. The narrow 
victory in New York was won only through the tireless advo- 
cacy of Alexander Hamilton, who loyally supported the Consti- 
tution, although, as we have seen, it did not satisfy him in 



1^2 Ike 2\'civ Republic 

some important respects. He made the campaign one of 
splendid political education through the anonymous publication 
(with the help of Madison and Jay) of a most remarkable set 
of essays called " The Federalist," explaining the nature of the 
new Constitution. In Virginia and Massachusetts such patriots 
as Richard Heniy Lee, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Elbridge 
Gerry, and John Hancock opposed the Constitution on the 
ground of its infringement on the powers of the states.^ But. 
when the ratification was finally assured, the American public 
forgot their differences and weri^'wild with joy. Dinners, pro- 
cessions, illuminations, jollifications of every sort, followed each 
other in bewildering succession. Allegory w^as called to the aid 
of sober history-. " The sloop Anarchy ^^ declared one joumsi^ 
" has gone ashore on the Union rock"; another said that " th^' 
old scow Confederacy^ Imbecility master, had gone off to sea. V 
" Federal punch " was a favorite brew in the taverns ; " federal 
hats " and '' federal stays " were advertised in the shops ; and 
" federal tobacco mixture " was smoked in patriot pipes. 
218. The But this was only the natural ebulliency of spirit of a young 

a wonderful ^nd hearty nation, in days when political entliusiasm expressed 
itself more naively and directly than it does in the twentieth 
century. The glare of red fire attending the ratification of the 
Constitution should not blind us to the immense significance of 
that event for the history of democratic progress. By the 
adoption of the Constitution of the United States our country 
passed, without civil revolution or a military dictatorship, from 
anarchy to order, from weakness to strength, from death to 
life. Count Alexis de Tocqueville, our distinguished French 
visitor in 1833, and one of the keenest observers of our demo- 
cratic institutions, wrote of this achievement : " It is new in 

1 The opposition to the Constitution was not confined to any one section of 
the countr}- nor to any single class of people ; neither was it founded on any 
single ground. The various arguments pro and con are well summed up in 
Woodrow \\'ilson-s History' of the American People, Vol. Ill, p. 79. See also 
MacLaughlin's The Confederation and the Constitution (The American Nation 
Series), pp. 27S-297. 



achievement 



TJie Constitution i'/2> 

the history of society to see a great people turn a calm and 
scrutinizing eye upon itself when apprized . . . that the wheels 
of its government are stopped ; to see it carefully examine the 
extent of the evil and patiently wait two whole years until a 
remedy is discovered, to which it voluntarily submits without its 
costing a tear or a drop of blood from mankind." y^ 

( The Federal Power ^ 

This is the place to pause for a brief study of the wonder- 219. The 
ful instrument of government under which the United States contrasted""^ 

has lived for a century and a quarter, and increased from a with the 

^ ^ Articles of 

seaboard community of 4,000,000 to a continental nation num- confederation 

bering over 90,000,000. 

\ In contrast to the old government under the Articles of Confed- 
eration, the new Constitution was framed as a government " of 
the people, by the people, and for the people " of the United 
States. Whereas the members of the old Congress were serv- 
ants of their respective state legislatures, by whom they were 
sent or recalled at pleasure, the members of the new House of 
Representatives, elected by the voters in congressional districts 
in every state, were to be servants of the nation, paid from its 
treasury to make laws for the good of the whole land, and 
given adequate powers to deal with all questions of national 
importance. Whereas the president of the old Congress had 
been simply its presiding officer or moderator, the President of 
the United States under the new Constitution was given powers 
for the execution of the laws made by Congress, — powers ex- 
tending into every corner of the land, and greater than those 
enjoyed by most constitutional monarchs. And finally, whereas 
the old Congress provided for no permanent court to pronounce 
on the validity of its own laws or settle disputes at law between 
the various states, the new Constitution established a Supreme 

1 The text of the Constitution of the United States (Appendix II) should 
be carefully studied in connection with this section, which is virtually a com- 
mentary on it. 



174 ^^ New Republic 

Court of the United States, and gave Congress power to estab- 
lish inferior national (or federal) courts throughout the Union. 
220. The The creation of these three independent departments of leg- 

mentsoTgov- islative, executive, and judicial pov^er, reaching every citizen in 
ernment every part of the land, was the fundamental achievement of 

the framers of the Constitution. The idea of the threefold 
division of power was not a new one, for the governments of 
the colonies had all consisted of lawmaking assemblies elected 
by the people, an executive appointed (except in Connecticut 
and Rhode Island) by king or proprietary, and courts of jus- 
tice from which there was final appeal to the Privy Council of 
the king. But the task of adopting this triple plan of govern- 
ment on a national scale, while still preserving the individuality 
and even to a large extent the independence of the states, was 
a very difficult and delicate one. 

The legislative department of our government is described in 
Article I of the Constitution, where the qualifications, length of 
term, method of election, duties and powers of the members of 
both Houses of Congress, are prescribed. The number of sena- 
tors in every Congress is just twice the number of states in the 
Union, but the size of the House of Representatives is altered 
every ten years when a new census of the United States is 
taken. Congress then makes a new ratio of representation and 
a new apportionment of congressional districts for each state, 
according to its population. The present House (19 15) con- 
tains 435 members, one for about every 212,000 of population. 
If the original ratio of i to 30,000 had been kept, the House 
would now contain about 2800 members. So rapid has been 
the growth of the Western country that from some of the 
original seaboard states the number of representatives to Con- 
gress has actually decreased since the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century. By the apportionment of the census of 1800 
Connecticut was entitled to 7 congressmen,^ Massachusetts to 

1 Although Congress consists of the. Senate and the House of Representa- 
tives, the term " congressman " is ahvays used fpr a member of the House, and 
" senator " for a member of the Senate. 



The Constitution 1/5 

17, North Carolina to 12, Virginia to 22; by the apportion- 
ment of the census of 1900 these states were given a represen- 
tation respectively of 5, 14, 10, and 10. On the other hand, 
New York, with the magnificent development of its highway of 
commerce from Lake Erie to Manhattan, jumped from a repre- 
sentation of 17 in 1800 to 37 in 1900 ; and Pennsylvania, with 
its rich coal and iron industries, enjoyed a growth in population 
entitling it to 32 congressmen in 1900 as against 18 in 1800. 

In order to become laws of the United States all bills intro- 222. The 
duced into Congress have to pass both Houses and receive the congress 
President's signature. If the President vetoes a bill, it still be- 
comes a law if, on reconsideration, both Houses pass it by a two- 
thirds majority. If Congress passes a law which is not within 
its authority as granted by the Constitution (Art. I, Sect. 8), 
the Supreme Court of the United States, when appealed to in 
any case to test that law, has the right and duty to declare the 
law void. The subjects on which Congress may legislate natu- 
rally include all those which concern the dignity and credit of the 
nation in the eyes of foreign powers, and its peace and security 
at home, namely : the regulation of commerce with foreign 
nations and between the states ; the declaration of war and the 
direction of the military and naval forces of the country; the 
regulation of the currency and coinage ; the control of territories 
and public lands ; the care of the Indians, of rivers and harbors, 
lighthouses, coast survey, and all that pertains to shipping and 
defense. Moreover, the states are forbidden to exercise certain 
powers of sovereignty delegated to the national Congress. No 
state can make alliances, go to war, coin money, lay taxes on 
the commerce of another state, or. make anything but gold and 
silver legal tender (lawful money) for the payment of debts. 

However, after deducting the powers delegated to Congress 223. The 
or expressly denied to the states, the latter have an immense field thrstates ^ 
for legislation. All those things which especially interest the 
average citizen are affairs of the state government, namely : the 
protection of life and property ; laws of marriage and inheritance ; 



1/6 



TJie Nezv Republic 



224. The 
executive de- 
partment 
(the Presi- 
dent and his 
assistants) 



the chartering and control of business corporations, banks, in- 
surance and trust companies ; the definition and punishment of 
crimes ; the establishment of systems of public education ; the 
creation of city, county, and town governments ; and a host of 
other powers, political, moral, and social. Sometimes the field of 
jurisdiction between the national and the state power is hard 




The Capitol at Washington 
Meeting place of the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court 

to distinguish, but the decision of the Supreme Court is final 
in determining both the limits of the federal authority and the 
interpretation of the Constitution. 

The duty of putting into effect the laws of Congress is in- 
trusted to the executive department of our government. Theo- 
retically, the -whole of this immense task falls on the President 
alone, who '' shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." 
Actually no man could do a hundredth part of the work of 
executing the thousands of laws which Congress passes every 
session. To collect the duties and excises which Congress lays ; 
to coin the money which it authorizes ; to print and sell the bonds 



The Constit7ition 177 

it issues ; to command the armies it raises ; to build and man the 
warships it votes ; to appoint judges for the courts it erects ; 
to handle the business of the post office ; to carry into effect its 
agreements, political and economic, with the nations of the 
world; to govern its territories and dependencies in America, 
the West Indies, and the Pacific — all this calls for the labors of 
tens of thousands of secretaries, undersecretaries, and clerks in 
the various executive departments at Washington, and a host of 
federal officials in our seaports, our dockyards, our forts and 
arsenals, our islands and territories, and the capitals and chief 
commercial centers of foreign countries. 

Ten great executive departments have been created by Con- 225. The 
gress to perform these varied duties.^ Every President, on 
coming into office, chooses the heads of these departments, and 
these ten secretaries form the President's " official family," or 
cabinet. They are lieutenants of the President only, responsible 
to him alone and removable by him at his pleasure. They 
are not members of Congress (as ministers in Europe are), 
nor have they access to the floor of Congress. The President 
consults them in regular cabinet meetings as to the affairs of 
their departments, and, acting on their knowledge and advice, 
communicates with Congress by an annual message when 
the Houses assemble on the first Monday of each December, 
and by as many special messages during the session as he 
sees fit to send. Congress does not recognize the cabinet, but 
only the President. Laws on every subject go to him, not 
to the heads of departments, for signature. Appointments to 

1 Under Washington and his immediate successors there were but four de- 
partments : namely, State (Foreign Affairs), Treasury, War, and the Post Office, 
The following departments have been added as the business of government 
required them: Navy (1798), Interior (1849), Justice [the Attorney-General's 
department] (1870), Agriculture (1889), Commerce and Labor (1903), made into 
two separate departments (19 13). The Attorney-General, or legal adviser of the 
President and prosecutor of suits brought by the United States, was a member of 
the President's cabinet from the inauguration of the government. On the other 
hand, though the Post-Office Department was organized in the colonial days, 
its head (the Postmaster-General) was not made a member of the cabinet 
until 1S29. 



1/8 The New Republic 

executive and judicial offices, needing the consent of the Senate, 
are sent to that body not by the secretaries but by the President. 
He is the only executive officer recognized by the Constitution. 
It was the intention of the framers of the Constitution to have 
the President, the most important servant of the government of 
the United States, chosen by a selected body of judicious men 
called " electors." Every state should choose, in the manner pre- 
scribed by its legislature, a number of men equal to that state's 
representation in Congress. The men so chosen were to as- 
semble and vote for President and Vice President.^ Thus our 
chief executive was to be actually selected and elected by a 
small, carefully chosen body of men in each state. But the 
statesmen who planned this calm, judicious method of selecting 
a President did not foresee the intense party feeling that was to 
develop in the United States even before George Washington 
was out of the presidential chair. The party leaders began at 
once to select the candidates for President and Vice President, 
and have done so ever since.^ 
227. The The voters in each state still continue to cast their votes for 

the"Sectorai presidential electors, but the electors no longer choose the Presi- 
^°^® dent. They simply register the vote of their state. Each party 

ticket in each state has a list of electors (equal in number to the 
presidential votes to which the state is entitled). It is under- 
stood that each of the electors on the victorious ticket will cast 
his vote for the candidate of his party, who has been regularly 
nominated by the national convention some months before. In 

1 At first the electors did not vote for President and Vice President separately, 
but simply marked two names on their ballots. The man who received the 
highest number of votes (if a majority of the whole number) became President, 
and the man with the next highest number Vice President. Since this method 
of choice resulted in an embarrassing tie in the election of i8oo, the Constitu- 
tion was amended (Amendment XII) in 1804, so as to have each elector vote 
specifically for President and Vice President. 

2 In the early years of the republic the candidates were selected by party 
caucuses in Congress or by the indorsement of the various state legislatures. 
About 1830 the national party "machines" were organized, and from that time 
great national conventions, engineered by these party machines, have met several 
months before each presidential election to nominate the candidates. 



The Constitution 179 

other words, each state, in choosing Republican or Democratic 
electors, simply instructs those electors to vote for the Republican 
or Democratic candidate for the presidency. As soon, therefore, 
as the electors are voted for, in November, it is known which 
candidate has been elected President, without waiting for those 
electors to meet and cast their ballots the following January. 

The judicial department of our government is the hardest to 228. The 
understand, because of the variety of courts and the double partment^" 
jurisdiction of national and state tribunals. Every citizen of the ^"^^ courts) 
United States lives under two systems of law, national and state. 
For violation of national laws (the laws of Congress) he is tried 
in the federal (or national) courts ; for violation of state laws he 
is tried in the state courts. 

The highest court in our judicial system is the United States 229. The 
Supreme Court, sitting at Washington, composed of a chief supremr^*^^ 
justice and eight associate justices, all appointed for life by the ^°^^* 
President, with the consent of the Senate. This most dignified 
body in our government is invested with enormous power. Its 
decision is final in all cases brought to it by appeal from state 
or federal courts throughout the land.^ It is the official inter- 
preter and guardian of the Constitution. It has sole jurisdic- 
tion in cases affecting foreign ambassadors or ministers, and 
in cases between two states or between a state and the United 
States. But any case between corporations or individuals in- 
volving the interpretation of a clause of the Constitution may be 
appealed from the lower courts to its jurisdiction, and in the deci- 
sion of such a case it has the right to nullify or declare void any 
law of Congress or of a state that it finds violating the Consti- 
tution. Radical reformers, especially in the last generation, in- 
dignant that a mere handful of men appointed by the President, 
and holding office for life, should have power so to control the 

1 Congress has established federal courts in every state of the Union ; and all 
the federal judges (now about loo in number) are appointed for life by the Presi- 
dent, with the consent of the Senate. The judges of the state courts are either 
appointed by the governor (in a few of the older states) or elected by the people 
or the legislature for a term varying from 2 to 21 years. 



i8o The New Reptiblic 

legislation of the forty-odd states of the Union, have attacked 
the Supreme Court and even demanded its abolition. But the 
vast majority of Americans look upon the highest tribunal of 
the nation with pride for the moderation of its decisions and 
with respect for the integrity and ability of its members. 

There are many important features in the actual conduct of 
the government of the United States which are not mentioned 
in the constitution at all. The President's cabinet, the national 
nominating conventions, and the instruction of electors to vote 
for the party's nominee for President, are examples that we have 
already noticed. Other customs which amount almost to " un- 
written laws " of the Constitution are (i) the limitation of the 
President's office to two terms, an example set by Washington 
and never yet departed from ; (2) " senatorial courtesy," which 
expects the President to follow the recommendation of the United 
States senators of his party in making federal appointments 
(judges, marshals, collectors of customs, postmasters) in their re- 
spective states ; (3) the great power of the Speaker of the House 
of Representatives, who, by his selection of members of the com- 
mittees and by " recognizing" on the floor of the House only such 
debaters as he chooses to, can do more to influence the legislation 
of Congress than any other man in the country ; (4) the transaction 
of practically all the business of Congress in committee rooms. 
As a consequence of the last two points mentioned. Congress 
has largely ceased to be a hall of debate in which national issues 
are threshed out by the greatest orators of the nation, and has 
become scarcely more than a great voting machine, run by the 
party in power. Only occasionally is its influence felt in shaping 
the political or moral thought of the nation, through some set 
speech which has been reprinted and circulated. Few Ameri- 
cans follow the daily business of Congress as Englishmen follow 
the debates of Parliament. 
231. The ^ Several of the states, notably Massachusetts, accepted the 
(Amendments Constitution with the recommendation that amendments be added 
i-x) guaranteeing certain immemorial rights, such as liberty of speech 




CO 



TJic Co7istitntion i8i 

and press, immunity from arbitrary arrest and cruel punish- 
ments, freedom of peaceable assembly, and the right to be tried 
by a jury of one's peers after a public hearing of witnesses on 
both sides. Ten amendments, constituting a Bill of Rights, were 
accordingly adopted by Congress and ratified by the states soon 
after the inauguration of the new government (November, 1 79 1). 
The demand for these amendments shows that the states still 
regarded the central government with something of that jealous 
and cautious distrust with which they had viewed the officers of 
the British crown. 

Only seven amendments have been added to the Constitution 232. Amend- 
since the passage of the Bill of Rights. Of these, two were only constitution 
slight revisions of clauses in the original articles, and three were 
occasioned by slavery and the Civil War. If the process of* 
amending the Constitution were less complicated (see Art. V), 
we should probably have had many more than seventeen amend- 
ments, for proposals are constantly being agitated for the altera- 
tion of the Constitution ; for example, that Congress be given 
power to regulate certain business corporations ; that the people 
be allowed to '' initiate " legislation, or instruct Congress to in- 
troduce certain bills ; that the presidential office be limited to 
one term of six years ; that power be given to Congress to make 
laws governing marriage and divorce, regulating the labor of 
women and children, bestowing the suffrage on women, abolish- 
ing the sale of intoxicating liquors ; that the President be elected 
by direct popular vote ; and many others. 

In the absence of specific amendments Congress is able to 233. The 
extend its authority pretty widely by stretching the so-called clause "of the 
" elastic clause " of the Constitution, which, after the enumera- Constitution 
tion of the powers of Congress, adds, '' And to make all laws 
which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution 
the foregoing powers" (Art. I, sect. 8, clause 18). From the 
very earliest days of our government there have been parties 
with opposite views on the interpretation of this clause of the 
Constitution. The " strict conb'fructionists " have held that the 



1 82 The New Reptcblic 

letter of the Constitution must be obsei-ved, and that Congress 
and the President must exercise only the powers explicitly 
grafited to them in Articles I and II. On the other hand, the 
'^ loose constructionists," professing themselves equally devoted 
to the Constitution, have contended that the true interpretation 
of its spirit involves the assumption by the President and Con- 
gress of powers not explicitly granted, but evidently intended 
and implied. 

234. The The recent industrial and commercial development of our 

extent of the . . , ■ . . , . ' - , 

federal power country has made the question oi the extent and power or the 

federal government a very vital one. For example, when the 
Constitution gives Congress the right to " regulate commerce 
among the several states " (Art. I, sect. 8, clause 3), does that 
* power necessarily carry with it the regulation of the rates which 
railroads shall charge to carry goods from state to state, the reg- 
ulation of the corporations which do a large business in and be- 
tween many states, and even the regulation of the factories 
whose products go into all the states of the Union ? Our rapid 
economic development has carried our great industries beyond 
the limits and control of the states. Can we respect the power 
of the states and still maintain the efficiency of our national 
government? That is the great question which to-day divides 
the advocates of federal extension and the critics of " federal 
usurpation." 

REFERENCES 

The Critical Period : John Fiske, The Critical Period, of Ameiican 
Historv, chaps, ii-v ; Old South Leaflets, Nos. 2 (The Articles of Con- 
federation), 13, 127 (The Northwest Ordinance); A. C. McLaughlin, 
The Confederation and the Constitution (American Nation Series), 
chaps, iv-xi ; Justin Winsor, Narrative and C7-itical History of Amer- 
ica, Vol. VII, chap, iii ; A. B. Hart, American History told by Contem- 
poraries, Vol. Ill, Nos. 37-41, 46, 47, 52 ; Theodore Roosevelt, The 
Winning of the West,No\. III. 

A More Perfect Union : Fiske, chaps, v-viii ; McLaughlin, chaps, 
xii-xviii; Winsor, Vol. VII, chap, iv; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 
VII, chap, viii ; C. A. Beard, Readings in Ajnerican Govem??tent and 



The Constitution 183 

Politics, Nos. 14-21; Old South Leaflets, Nos. 70, 99, 186, 197; The 
Federalist, ed. Paul Leicester Ford, Introduction, pp. vii-xxix, Nos. 
2, 10, 15, 27, 85; Hart, Vol. Ill, Nos. 60-75. 

The Federal Power : B. Moses, The Government of the United States, 
chaps, iv-vii ; James Bryce, The American Commonwealth (abridged 
edition), chaps, iii-xxvi ; R. L. Ashley, The American Government, 
pp. 204-355 '■> S- E. FoRMAN, Advanced Civics, pp. 115-161 ; The Feder- 
alist, Nos. 41-44, 52-82 ; Beard, Nos. 55-158. 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Northwest Ordinance : ^YL\AAM.yip.(zT)o^KLV), Select Documents 
of American History, iyy^-1861, No. 4 (for text) ; FiSKE, pp. 187-207 ; 
Roosevelt, Vol. Ill, pp. 231-276; Old South Leaflets, Nos. 13, 42; 
Hart, Vol. Ill, Nos. 36, 42, 46; McLaughlin, pp. 108-122; B. A. 
Hinsdale, The Old Northwest, chap, xv; W. F. Poole, in The North 
American Review, Vol. CXXII, pp. 229-265. 

2. The Opposition to the Constitution : [in New York] The Federalist, 
Introduction, pp. xix-xxix ; [in Massachusetts] S. B. Harding, Contest 
over Ratification in Massachusetts (Harvard Historical Studies, 1896); 
[in general] Hart, Vol. Ill, Nos. 70, 71, 73-75; McLaughlin, pp. 
~77-?)^7 ; FiSKE, pp. 306-345; WiNSOR, Vol. VII, pp. 246-251. 

3. The Powers of the Speaker of the House: Beard, Nos. 101-105 ; 
Bryce, pp. 104-107 ; Anna Dawes, How we are Governed, pp. 120-145 ; 
Mary Follett, The Speaker of the House; A. B. Hart, Practical Essays 
in American Government, No. i ; Franklin Pierce, Federal Usurpation, 
pp. 162-169. 

4. Our Foreign Relations under the Confederation : McLaughlin, pp. 
89-107 ; also Western Posts and British Debts {American Historical Asso- 
ciation Report, i8g4), pp. 413-444 ; J. B. MacMaster, Histoiy of the 
People of the United States, Vol.1, chaps, iii-iv; F. A. Ogg, The Opening 
of the Mississippi, pp. 400-460; FiSKE, pp. 131-144, 154-162. 



CHAPTER VII 



FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS 



Launching the Government 



The United States which Washington was called upon to 
preside over in 1789, by the unanimous vote of the presidential 
electors, was a far different country from the United States of 
to-day, A free white population of 3,200,000, with 700,000 
slaves, — considerably less altogether than the present population 
of New York City, — was scattered along the Atlantic seaboard 
from the rockbound coast of New England to the rice lands of 
Georgia. Philadelphia, the gay capital of the Confederation, 
had a population of 42,000. New York had about 32,000; 
and Boston, Charleston, Baltimore, and Salem -were the only 
other cities whose census reached the 10,000 mark. Virginia, 
the oldest and largest of the commonwealths of the Union, had 
not a single city worthy of the name. A small but steady immi- 
gration, chiefly of Scotch-Irish stock from Virginia and North 
Carolina, had followed Daniel Boone and John Sevier across 
the Alleghenies to found the states of Kentucky and Tennes- 
see. The census of 1790 estimated that 109,000 of these hardy 
frontiersmen were scattered through the rich valleys of the Ohio 
and the Cumberland rivers. 

What is now a land of factories and cities was then a land of 
forests and farms. Over 90 per cent of the inhabitants were 
tillers of the soil. Shipping and fishing were the only industries 
of importance. Of manufactures there was scarcely a trace. 
Travel was infrequent, roads were scarce and poor, and the 
inns had to make up in hospitality what they lacked in comforts 
and conveniences. The lumbering, springless stagecoach, with its 

184 



Federalists and Republicans 



185 



stifling leathern curtains for protection against wind and rain, 
was the only means of transportation for those whose business 
prevented them from traveling by water, or whose health or cir- 
cumstances made impossible the journey by horseback. In any 
case, the means of transportation at the end of the eighteenth 
century showed no essential improvement in comfort or speed 
over those of two thousand years earlier, — the horse, the sail- 
boat, and the stage. The journey of a Roman official from 
Asia Minor to Italy in fourteen days, over the splendid roads 
of the Roman Empire, could not have been duplicated anywhere 
in America, or even in Europe, in the year 1800. 




Express Service in Washington's Day 

The immediate economic needs of the country, such as the 237. eco- 
cl earing and settling of new lands, the provision for a reliable gg^s 
and uniform currency, the nurture of manufactures and com- 
merce, were so pressing that the American in 1789 devoted 
even a smaller fraction of his time than he does to-day to 
the cultivation of intellectual and artistic interests. 

Society in the American cities jealously guarded the distinc- 238. social 
tions of high birth and good breeding. Powdered wigs, silver 
buckles, liveried footmen, stately courtesy of speech and man- 
ners were the marks of the social aristocracy. But for all its 
brave show it was a harmless aristocracy. The wide gulf which 
to-day separates fabulous wealth from sordid poverty did 



conditions 



1 86 The Neiv Republic 

not exist in the United States of 1789. Our visitors from 
Europe, especially the Frenchmen, were impressed with the 
general diffusion of moderate prosperity in America, and were 
filled with prophetic hopes that this land would be forever a 
model of democracy to the " caste-ridden " countries of Europe. 

239. The The first Wednesday in March (March 4), .1789, had been 
of theg?vern- appointed by the old Congress of the Confederation as the day 
ment £qj. ^^ assembling of the new Congress of the • United States. 

On the third of March the guns of New York .fired a parting 
salute to the old government, and on the next morning a wel- 
coming salute to the new. But both salutes stirred only empty 
echoes ; for the old Congress had ceased to meet some months 
before, and the new Congress was not ready to organize for 
nearly a month to come. Poor roads, uncertain conveyances, 
and the lateness of the elections had prevented more than half 
of the twenty-two senators-^ and three fourths of the fifty-nine 
congressmen from reaching New York City, the temporary capi- 
tal, on the appointed day. It took the entire month of April 
for the Houses to organize, to count the electoral vote, notify 
Washington formally of his election, and witness the ceremony 
of his inauguration as first President of the United States 
(April 30). 

240. The Washington's journey from his fine estate of Mount Vernon, 
new President ^ ^ 1 • r tvt ^r i 1 

on the Potomac, to the city or New York was one long ovation. 

The streets were strewn with flowers. Triumphal arches, din- 
ners, speeches, cheers, and songs gave him the grateful assurance 
that his inestimable services in war and peace were appreciated 
by his countrymen. His characteristic response showed no ela- 
tion of pride, but only a deepened sense of responsibility in his 
new office. " I walk on untrodden ground," he wrote ; " there is 
scarcely any action the motive of which may not be subjected 
to a double interpretation ; there is scarcely any part of my 
conduct that may not hereafter be drawn into precedent." All 

1 North Carolina and Rhode Island did not come into the Union until some 
months after Washington's inauguration. 



Federalists and Republicans 187 

eyes were upon him. His task was immense. He had to create 
the democratic dignity of the President's office, to choose wise 
counselors, to appoint upright and able judges, to hold factions in 
check, to deal wisely with the representatives of foreign powers, 
to set a precedent for the relations of the executive to Con- 
gress, to preserve the due forms of official ceremony without 
offending republican principles ; and it needed every particle of 
his wisdom, his tact, his patience, his zeal, to accomplish the task. 

After some entreaty Washington prevailed on Thomas Jeff er- 241. Thomas 
son to give up his diplomatic position as minister to France and sectary of 
become Secretary of State in the first cabinet. Jefferson was a ^^**'* 
great statesman and scholar, with an intense faith in the sound 
common sense of the people, and an equally strong distrust of 
a powerful executive government. He said that as between 
newspapers without a government or a government without 
newspapers, he preferred the former. His enthusiasm for the 
democratic ideal had been strengthened by a wide and sympa- 
thetic reading of the great French political philosophers who 
were helping to prepare the way for the French Revolution. 
Sometimes this enthusiasm led him to extreme statements, as, 
for example, that a revolution every twenty years or so was 
good for a nation ; but his practice was more moderate than his 
theory, and he never actually encouraged or supported any revo- 
lution except the great one which made us an independent nation. 
He differed widely from Washington in his interpretation of the 
Constitution and in his foreign policy, but nevertheless, during 
the four years which he served in the cabinet, he was a loyal 
and efficient officer, and his resignation was accepted in 1793 
with expressions of sincere regret and eulogy by his chief. 

For Secretary of the Treasury Washington chose Alexander 242. Alex- 
Hamilton. Hamilton was born in 1757, of Scotch and French ton,^se??eTary 

blood, in the British island of Nevis in the West Indies. On o*the 

Treasury 
account of his precocious gifts of intellect he was sent to New 

York in his early teens to be educated at Kings (Columbia) Col- 
lege. He plunged immediately into the stirring political battle 



1 88 The New Republic 

raised by the Stamp Act and the Townshend duties, embracing 
the patriot cause. He served as Washington's aid-de-camp during 
the Revolution, sat in the convention that framed the Constitu- 
tion, and, by his brilliant essays in " The Federalist " and debates 
in the New York convention, secured almost single-handed the 
ratification of the Constitution by his state. He differed abso- 
lutely from Jefferson on every question of the interpretation of 
the Constitution and the policy of the government. The two 
men, each convinced of the justice and necessity of his own 
view, glared at each other across the cabinet table, and even 
on occasions rose trembling with rage, ready to lay violent 
hands on each other. Each begged the President to choose 
between them and let the other resign. But Washington, partly 
to keep in his cabinet representatives of opposite views in 
public policy, partly because he did not want to spare the valu- 
able services of either of them, prevailed on tljem both to 
remain in the cabinet during his first administration. 

243. The An immense and varied mass of business confronted the first 
fore Congress Congress of the United States. The executive departments 

(State, Treasury, War) had to be created, salaries fixed, and 
appropriations made for running the government. Federal 
courts and post offices had to be established. The Indians 
on the northern and western borders had to be subdued, and 
provision made for governing the territories. The seventy- 
eight amendments which the various states had suggested 
on accepting the Constitution had to be debated and reduced 
to suitable form and number to submit to the people of each 
state for ratification. Twelve amendments were actually sub- 
mitted, and ten adopted. The first census of the United States 
had to be taken, and a site selected for the permanent capital 
of the Union. 

244. The But the most urgent business before Congress was the settle- 
ation ' rnent of the country's finances. Alexander Hamilton occupies 

the center of the stage in Washington's first administration. 
The brilliant young Secretary of the Treasury had two great 



Federalists and Republicans 1 89 

problems to handle, namely, the establishment of the credit of 
the United States, and the providing of an adequate income to 
meet the expenses of the government. How well he solved 
these problems we may learn from the ornate eulogy bestowed 
on him forty years later by Daniel Webster : " He smote the 
rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of revenue 
gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of Public Credit, and 
it sprang upon its feet." 

The debt of the United States in 1789 was $54,000,000. 
About $12,000,000 of this was owed to France and Holland, 
who had been our allies in the Revolutionary War ; and the re- 
mainder was a domestic debt, mostly in the form of certificates 
of the government promising to pay the holder the amount 
named on the paper. Now everybody agreed that the good faith 
of the United States demanded that every dollar of the foreign 
debt should be paid. But Hamilton's proposal to pay the do- 
mestic debt as well, at its full face value, was strenuously resisted. 
During the weak administration of the Confederation the certifi- 
cates, or the government's promises to pay, had fallen far below 
the value named on their face. Honest debtors had been forced 
to part with these government certificates at only a fraction of 
their value, and shrewd money changers had bought them up 
as a speculation. It was even hinted by Hamilton's enemies 
that he had given his friends and political supporters advance 
information that he was going to pay the full value of the cer- 
tificates, and so enabled them to buy up the paper and make 
enormous profits out of the government. In spite of the fact 
that it enriched some rascals at the expense of the community 
at large, Hamilton insisted that the full faith of the United 
States be kept, and that the certificates be redeemed at their 
face value. It would be the only way, he argued, to prevent 
future holders from selling at a discount our government's 
pledges to pay. He was right. Since his day the credit of the 
United States has been so sound that its bonds, or promises 
to pay at a future date, have generally been as good as gold. 



190 The Nezv Republic 

246. The Hamilton went even a step further in his policy of making 

tio^'^of^the the United States a power entitled to respect and confidence in 
8tetes°* *^® the eyes of the world. The various states of the Union had con- 
tracted debts during the Revolutionary War to the amount of 
some $20,000,000, On the ground that debts incurred for the 
common defense of the country should be paid out of the com- 
mon treasury of the country, Hamilton proposed to Congress 
that the United States should assume this $20,000,000 of state 
debts. This policy of " assumption " was a very shrewd one, 
for, by making the national government instead of the thirteen 
state governments responsible for the country's debt, it taught 
creditors both at home and abroad to regard the United States 
as a single political power, greater than the sum of its parts, 
the states. It made possible a uniform rate of interest and 
standard of security for all the public debt ; and, as men are 
always interested in the prosperity of those who owe them 
money, it rallied the rich investing classes to the support of the 
national government. 
247, A tariff To meet the interest on the $75,000,000 made by adding the 
state debts to the full face value and unpaid interest of the old 
national debt under the Confederation, an annual revenue of 
over $4,500,000 was needed. Hamilton proposed to raise this 
money by a tariff, or customs duties levied on imported goods. ^ 
As our foreign trade was large, a tariff averaging less than 10 
per cent was sufficient to meet the demand. Besides providing 
a revenue for running the government, the duties levied on im- 
ported goods would encourage native manufactures by " pro- 
tecting " them against European competition. Our country 
would thus cease to be an almost purely agricultural community, 
with the limited outlook and interests of a farming people ; cities 
would grow up, and the various fields of enterprise opened by 

1 Tariff is an Arabic word meaning, literally, a '' list " or " schedule." We use 
the word for duties levied on imported goods, while the duty on domestic goods 
is called internal revenue. The theory of the tariff is discussed at length further 
on in this book (Chapter IX). 



levied 



Federalists and Republic a7is 191 

manufacture and commerce would give employment to people of 
varied talents, would attract immigrants from foreign countries, 
and would promote inventiveness and alertness in our population. 

The crowning feature of Hamilton's financial system was the 248. a Na- 
establishment of a National Bank, chartered by Congress to act charter^d"*^ 
as the government's agent and medium in its money transac- 
tions. The Bank was to have the privilege of holding on deposit 
all the funds of the United States collected from customs duties, 
the sale of public lands, or other sources; $2,000,000 of the 
$10,000,000 of the Bank's capital was to be subscribed by the 
United States, and its notes were to be accepted in payment of all 
debts owed the United States. In return for these favors the 
Bank was to manage all the government loans, was to be ready 
in time of financial stress to furnish aid to the Treasury of the 
United States, and was to be subject to the general supervision 
of the national government through reports on its condition sub- 
mitted not oftener than weekly to the Secretary of the Treasury. 

The whole financial program of Hamilton, which we have 249. opposi- 
outlined in brief, metwith bitter antagonism. The assumption ton's finan- 
of state debts was opposed by states like Virginia and North ciai policy 
Carolina, which, through the sale of their western lands had 
nearly paid off their debts, and objected to sharing in the taxa- 
tion for the payment of the debts of the less fortunate or less 
thrifty states. The tariff was opposed by the purely agricultural 
states of the South, which contended that the government had 
no business to encourage one form of industry (manufactures) 
in preference to another (farming). The Bank was opposed on 
the ground that Congress was nowhere in the Constitution given 
the power to create a corporation and to favor it with a monop- 
oly of the government's financial business. In his famous re- 
ports and recommendations to Congress in the years 1790 and 
1 79 1 Hamilton argued his cause with such force and brilliancy 
that he overcame opposition and put his whole program through ; 
although in some instances, as in the case of " assumption," only 
by the narrowest majorities. 



192 



The New Republic 



The result of Hamilton's policy was the division of the cab^ 
inet, Congress, and the country at large into two well-defined 
parties, one led by himself (to which both Washington and the 
Vice President, John Adams, inclined), the other led by Jefferson. 
Hamilton's followers were called Federalists, because they ad- 
vocated a strong federal (central) government as opposed to 
the state governments. The Jeffersonian party took the name 
Democratic-Republican, from which they very soon dropped the 
" Democratic " part, as the word was brought into disrepute 
by extreme revolutionists in France.^ The Republican party of 
Jefferson's day (to be carefully distinguished from the present 
Republican party, which was organized in 1854 in opposition 
to the extension of niegro slavery) had its chief following in the 
Southern states. It favored agriculture as against manufactur- 
ing industries. It advocated the " strict construction " of the 
Constitution. Finally, the Republicans had confidence in the 
people at large to conduct the greater part of the business of 
government in their local institutions of state, county, and town ; 
whereas the Federalists believed that a part of the people, '' the 
rich, the well-born, and the able," as John Adams wrote, should 
govern the rest. Hamilton even went so far, in a political 
argument with Jefferson, as to bring his fist down on the table 
and shout, '' Your people^ sir, is nothing but a great beast ! " 

Jefferson's ideal, in a word, was a government for the people 
and by the people, while Hamilton's ideal was a government 
for the people by the trained statesmen allied with the great 
property holders. The former is the democratic ideal, the latter 
the aristocratic or paternal ideal. In varying degrees of inten- 
sity these two conceptions of government have been arrayed 
against each other through the entire history of our country. 
Party names have changed ; men have called themselves Fed- 
eralists, Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Populists, Socialists ; 
parties have emphasized scores of " paramount issues," such as 

1 See Robinson and Beard, The Develop^ient of Modern Europe, Vol. I, 
p. 264, " The Reign of Terror." 




ALEXANDER HAMILTON 



Federalists and Republicans 



193 



a national bank, the tariff, state rights, the acquisition of new 
territory, curbing the trusts, the free coinage of silver, and the 
government ownership of the railroads. But underneath all 











^^ "^Z- '^^^"■^^k^-e-^ 



■*^ -M ^-*^tL<?^'~^ '^ 



Washington's Home at Mount Vernon 

these party issues lies the fundamental antagonism of the Jeffer- 
sonian and the Hamiltonian principles, — democracy or paternal- 
ism, jealous limitation of the powers granted to the national 
government or deliberate extension and confirmation of them. 



The Reign of Federalism 

As the election of 1792 approached, Washington wished to 252. There 
exchange the cares of the presidency fOr his beloved acres of Washington, 
Mount Vernon, on the banks of the Potomac. But he yielded ^^^^ 
to Hamilton's entreaty and became a candidate for a second 
term. The financial policy of the Secretary of the Treasury 
had aroused bitter antagonism, and was rapidly consolidating 
the opposition party of Republicans, headed by Thomas Jeffer- 
son. If the strong hand of Washington should be withdrawn 
from the government at this critical moment, the work of three 
years might be ruined by the strife of parties before it had had 
time to prove its worth. Washington was the only man above 
the party discord. His election was again unanimous, but the 



194 



""The Nezv Republic 



Republican party proved its strength throughout the country 
by electing a majority to the House of Representatives of the 
third Congress (i 793-1795)- 

Washington had scarcely taken the oath of office a second 
time when news came of events in France which were to plunge 
Europe into twenty years of incessant warfare, to color the 
politics of the United States during the whole period, and even 
to involve us in actual wars with both France and England. 
The French people accomplished a wonderful revolution in the 
years 1 789-1 791. They reformed State arid Church by sweep- 
ing away many oppressive privileges and age-long abuses by 
the nobles and the clergy. But the enthusiasm for reform de- 
generated into a passion for destruction. Paris and the French 
government fell into the hands of a small group of ardent radi- 
cals, who overthrew the ancient monarchy, guillotined their king 
and queen, and inaugurated a " reign of terror " through the 
land by the execution of all those who were suspected of the 
slightest leanings toward aristocracy. The revolutionary French 
republic undertook a defiant crusade against all the thrones of 
Europe, to spread the gospel of '' liberty, equality, and fraternity.'' 
In the summer of 1 793 it was at war with Prussia, Austria, Eng- 
land, and several minor kingdoms of western Europe.^ 

Now France was our ally. Her government had been the 
first in Europe to recognize the independence of the United 
States, by the treaties of commerce and alliance of 1778. Her 
king had lent us large sums of money, and sent us men and 
ships, in the hope that he was contributing to the downfall of 
the British Empire. The treaty of alliance of 1778 pledged us 
to aid France in the defense of her possessions in the West 
Indies if they were attacked b)- a foreign foe, and to allow her 
the use of our ports for the ships she captured in war. But did 
the treaty with Louis XVI's government, made for mutual de- 
fense against England, pledge us, after both parties had made 

1 For the course of the French Revolution, see Robinson and Beard, The 
Development of Modern Europe, Vol. I, chap. xiii. 



Federalists and Republicans 195 

peace with England (1783), to support the French republic 
which had overthrown Louis XVI's government? The Presi- 
dent thought not. Accordingly, with the unanimous assent of 
his cabinet, Washington issued on April 22, 1793, a proclama- 
tion of neutrality, which declared that it was the policy of the 
United States to keep entirely aloof from the complicated hos- 
tilities of Europe. It was a second declaration of independence. 

The proclamation of neutrality was prompted by the state of 255. Reasons 
our own country as well as by that of Europe. On our north- traiity 
western frontier the British were still in possession of a line 
of valuable fur posts extending along our side of the Great 
Lakes from Oswego to Mackinaw ; and were secretly encour- 
aging the Indians to dispute the occupation of the Ohio valley 
with the emigrants from the Atlantic seaboard. To the south 
and southwest the Spaniards were inciting the Creeks and Chero- 
kees of Florida against the inhabitants of Georgia, and, by clos- 
ing the mouth of the Mississippi to our western shipping, were 
tempting the pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee from their 
allegiance to the United States. To have joined France in her 
war against England and Spain, therefore, would have been to 
let loose the horrors of Indian massacre on our borders, to risk 
the permanent loss of our trading posts on the Great Lakes, 
and perhaps to throw the pioneer communities of the southwest 
into the arms of Spain, who offered them free use of the great 
river for the transportation of their hogs and grain. Neutrality 
was an absolute necessity for the maintenance of our territory 
and the amicable settlement of disputes then pending with our 
neighbors England and Spain. 

A few days before the proclamation of neutrality was issued 256. " citi- 
' ' Citizen Genet " arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, as min- Genet ^^^ 
ister of the French republic to the United States. Genet had 
no idea that America could remain neutral. He was coming 
quite frankly in order to use our ports as the base of naval war 
against the British West Indies, and to instruct this government 
in its proper conduct as the ally of the '' sister republic " of 



196 The New Republic 

France. His journey from Charleston to Philadelphia was a 
continuous ovation of feasting, oratory, and singing of the 
" Marseillaise " by the Republicans, who hated England as the 
source of the " aristocratic " ideas of Hamilton and the other 
Federalists. Genet was vain and rash. His head was turned 
by Republican adulation. His conduct became outrageous for 
a diplomat. He issued his orders to the French consuls in 
America as if they were his paid agents and spies. He used 
the columns of the Republican press for frenzied appeals to 
faction. He scolded our President and secretaries for not learn- 
ing from him the true meaning of democracy. He defied the 
proclamation of neutrality by openly bringing captured British 
ships into our ports and fitting them out as privateers to prey 
on English commerce in the West Indies. He even addressed 
his petulant letters to Washington, and when reminded by the 
Secretary of State that the President did not communicate 
directly with ministers of foreign countries, he threatened to 
appeal to the people of the United States to judge between 
George Washington and himself. Such conduct was too im- 
pertinent for even the warmest Republican sympathizers with 
France to stand. At the request of the administration Genet 
was recalled. His behavior had brought discredit on the extreme 
Republicans and strengthened the hands of the Federalists. 

A more serious problem for the administration of Washing- 
ton than the maintenance of neutrality was the preservation of 
peace with England. We have already seen how British gar- 
risons still held fortified posts on our shores of the Great 
Lakes. The value of the fur trade at the posts was ovei 
$1,500,000 annually, and the excuse Great Britain gave for not 
surrendering them was that American merchants owed large 
debts in England at the time of the treaty of 1783, which our 
government had not compelled them to pay. We, on our side, 
complained that the British, on the evacuation of our seaports 
at the close of the Revolution, had carried off a number of 
our slaves in their ships ; had closed the West Indian ports 




INTERVIEW BETWEEN WASHINGTON AND CITIZEN GENET 



Federalists and Repiiblicans 



197 



the country 
panic lest peace 



to our trade ; had refused to send a minister to our country ; 
and, at the outbreak of the war with France in 1793, had be- 
gun to stop our merchantmen on the high seas to search them 
for deserters from the British navy, and had actually '' impressed " 
into British service many genuine American citizens. The ex- 
asperated merchants of New England joined with the Republican 
friends of France in demanding war with England. A bill to 
stop all trade with Great Britain (a '' Nonintercourse Act ") 
was defeated in the Senate only by the casting vote of Vice 

President Adams, who wrote 
that many in 
were " in a 

should continue." At a hint 
from Washington, Congress 
would have declared war on 
Great Britain. 

But Washington was deter- 
mined to have peace. He 
nominated John Jay, chief jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court, as 
special envoy to Great Britain 
to negotiate a new treaty. Jay 
sailed in May, 1794, and re- 
turned just a year later with 
the best terms he could obtain 
from the British ministry. England agreed to evacuate the fur 
posts by the first of June, 1796, and to submit to arbitration 
the questions of disputed boundaries, damages to American 
shipping, and the debts due British merchants ; but she re- 
fused to make any compensation for the stolen slaves, and 
made such slight concessions to our trade in the West Indies 
that the Senate threw out that clause of the treaty entirely. 
On one of the most important points, the forcible arrest and 
search of our vessels for the impressment of seamen, the treaty 
was silent. 




John Jay 



198 



The Nezv Repiihlic 



259. Opposi- A Storm of opposition greeted the treaty in America. Those 
treaty in who wanted Jay to fail in order that the war with England 
America might be renewed, and those who wanted him to succeed in 



U/ " 



(n 



^^t.^^^9j'^ ^ ^<!^<:^c^^?^ <^2;2^<3<;vc< 




cc^'X' c:r^'it.~-c^^-^^!^ <2'':?x^-^ iiZS-^ t>:K~^ //Uz, (^:^z^/i^<^cOlv' 
^■^3^^H2'n^<?^'Chy^.<x^ ap^J^i^ -^C^^^L^ .y^IZie>, o<s.<^^i^ i^e/?-^ 



4^StZ«2^ZJ»-I»^^ Pl.Jl/,£3i6i^<^ 




By Courtesy of The Burrows Brothers Company, from Avery's " History of the United States " 

Facsimile of the First Page of Washington's Farewell Address 

securing advantageous terms from England, were both disap- 
pointed. Jay, who was one of the purest statesmen in American 
history, was accused of selling his country for British gold, and 
was burned in effigy from Massachusetts to Georgia. Hamilton 



Federalists and Republicans 199 

was stoned in the streets of New York for speaking in favor 
of the treaty. Even Washington did not escape censure, abuse, 
and vilification. However, the President was persuaded that the 
terms of the treaty were the best that could be obtained, and 
his influence barely secured the necessary two-thirds vote of the 
Senate to ratify it (June 24, 1795). 

The same year that war with England was averted Thomas 260. The 
Pinckney was sent as special envoy to the court of Spain, and xreaty^witb 
there negotiated a treaty opening the mouth of the Mississippi Spain, 1795 
to our vessels and giving us the right of unloading and reship- 
ping our goods at New Orleans. -=^*^..„ 

Thus Washington closed the critical years of his second ad- 261. wash- 
ministration at peace with the world. In a farewell address I^radmlints- 
to the people of America, published six months before his re- 1^*^^°°,.^!^ 
tirement from office, he warned the country against entangling , 
alliances with foreign nations, and the spirit of faction at home. / 
He had attempted himself to give the country a nonpartisan 
administration, but during his second term he had inclined more 
and more to Federalist principles. Jefferson and Randolph, the 
two Republican members of his cabinet, had resigned, and their 
places had been taken by Federalists. Determined that the laws 
of Congress should be obeyed in every part of every state of the 
Union, the administration had summoned the militia of Pennsyl- 
vania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland, fifteen thousand 
strong, to march against certain riotous counties in western 
Pennsylvania, where the taxes on whisky distilleries were re- 
sisted and the United States excise officers attacked.^ 

The Republicans opposed the administration at every step. 262. Bitter 
The press on both sides became coarse and abusive. Washing- fn^he^cam"^ 
ton was reviled in language fit to characterize a Nero. '' Tyrant," p^^sq of 1796 

1 The "Whisky Rebellion" (1794) collapsed in the face of this prompt ac- 
tion by the government, and Washington, who had marched in person part of 
the way with the army, returned in relief to the capital. The Republicans alter- 
nately ridiculed the administration for its elaborate military preparations against 
a " few irate farmers," and censured it for being willing to shed the blood of 
American citizens over a few barrels of stolen whisky. 



200 



The New Republic 



" dictator," and " despot " were some of the epithets hurled at 
him. He was called the '' stepfather of his country," and the 
day was hailed with joy by the Republican press when this 
impostor should be " hurled from his throne." The election of 
1796 was a bitter party struggle, in which the Federalist candi- 
date, John Adams, won over Thomas Jefferson by only three 
electoral votes (71 to 68). 

Our quarrel with France was the all-absorbing feature of 
Adams's administration. Chagrined as the French Republicans 
were by the refusal of Washington's government to join them 
in the war against England, they were furious when they learned 
of the Jay Treaty. Was their ally thus to make terms, and such 
servile terms, with their enemy ? Was the " sister republic " of 
America to join with aristocratic Britain against the liberty of 
mankind ? Our minister in Paris, James Monroe, letting his 
republican enthusiasm get the better of his diplomatic judgment, 
had overstepped his powers in assuring the leaders of the 
French republic that the United States would make no treaty 
with England. When, therefore, the Jay Treaty was signed and 
ratified, it became necessary for Washington to send a new min- 
ister to Paris. Charles C. Pinckney was appointed in June, 1796, 
but when he presented his credentials in December, the French 
government not only refused to accept them, but even ordered 
the new minister to leave the borders of France. 

This was outrageous conduct on the part of the Directory, as 
the executive board of five men at the head of the French re- 
public during the years 1 795-1 799 was called. Adams, just 
entering his term of office, acted with admirable decision and 
courage. He addressed a special session of Congress in a mes- 
sage which declared that such conduct '' ought to be repelled 
with a decision which should convince France and the world 
that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial 
spirit of fear." Still Adams desired peace, and, on a hint from 
Talleyrand, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, that an em- 
bassy would be received to discuss the political and commercial 



Federalists and Republicans 201 

disputes between the two countries, he appointed John Marshall 
of Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts to join Pinck- 
ney in negotiating a settlement with France, But the embassy 
was treated even worse than the minister had been. The Direc- 
tory showed itself not only arrogant but corrupt. Refusing to 
treat directly with the ambassadors, Talleyrand sent three private 
citizens to them as agents, demanding that before any negoti- 
ations were opened Adams should apologize to France, for the 
language of his message to Congress, and that a large sum of 
money should be paid into the private purses of the directors. 
The American commissioners indignantly repelled this unblush- 
ing attempt to extort a bribe, and quitted Paris in disgust.^ 

When Adams submitted to Congress, and Congress published 265. a state 
to the nation, this second insult of the French Directory, a wave pr^cg ^^^^ 
of indignation swept over our land. Adams sent a strong mes- 1798-1800 
sage to Congress, declaring that he had done everything in his 
power to preserve the peace. '' I will never send another min- 
ister to France," he said, " without assurances that he will be 
received, respected, and honored as the representative of a 
great, free, powerful, and independent nation." The great ma- 
jority of Americans heartily applauded the language of the Pres- 
ident and joined in the new patriotic song " Hail Columbia," with 
huzzas for " Adams and liberty.". Preparations for war were 
begun. Eighty thousand militia were held in readiness for service 
and George Washington was called to the chief conwnand, with 
Hamilton and Knox as his major generals. The Navy Depart- 
ment was created and ships of war were laid down. Congress 
did not actually declare war on the French republic, but it abro- 
gated the treaties of 1778 and authorized our ships to prey 
upon French commerce. From midsummer of 1798 to the 
close of the following year a state of war with France existed, 
and several battles were fought at sea. 

1 This insulting attempt to bribe the American commissioners is called the 
" X Y Z Affair," because the three French agents were designated by those 
letters, instead of by name, in the published dispatches. 



202 The New Republic 

266. Adams Then Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the weak and corrupt 
with Napo- government of the Directory and made himself master of France 
leon, 1801 under the title of First Consul. Napoleon desired peace with 

America ; he had enemies enough in Europe. He signified his 
willingness to receive a minister from the United States, and 
President Adams, to the great disappointment of the Feder 
alists, who were bent on war, but to his own lasting honor as a 
patriot, accepted Napoleon's overtures and concluded a fair con- 
vention with France in February, 1801. At the beginning of 
the new century we were again at peace with the world. 

267. Alien But the government had already passed from the Federalists, 
acts, 1798 In the heyday of their power, in the exciting summer of 1798, 

they had carried through Congress a set of laws designed to 
silence opposition to the administration. A Naturalization Act 
increased from five to fourteen years the term of residence in 
the United States necessary to make a foreigner a citizen. An 
Alien Act gave the President power for a term of two years 
" to order all such aliens as he should judge dangerous to the 
peace and safety of the United States ... to depart out of the 
territory of the United States." A Sedition Act, to be valid till 
the close of Adams's administration, provided that any one writ- 
ing or publishing ^' any false, scandalous, and malicious writings" 
against the government, either house of Congress, or the Presi- 
dent, " or exciting against them the hatred of the good people 
of the United States, to stir up sedition," should be punished by 
a fine not exceeding $2000 and by imprisonment not exceeding 
two years. These Alien and Sedition acts were opposed by 
Patrick Henry, Marshall, Hamilton, and other clearsighted 
Federalists; but in the hysterical war fever of 1798 any legis- 
lation directed against French immigrants and the unbridled 
insolence of the Republican press was sure to pass. 

268. The The Republicans immediately took up the challenge of the 
Kentucky Alien and Sedition acts. The legislatures of Kentucky and 
1798^'^*^'*°^' ^i^'gii^ia passed resolutions in November and December, 1798, 

prepared by Jefferson and Madison respectively. The former 



Federalists and Republicans 203 

declared the Sedition Act "altogether void and of no effect"; 
and the latter characterized the acts as " alarming infractions 
of the Constitution," which guarantees freedom of speech and 
of the press (First Amendment). Kentucky and Virginia invited 
the other states to join with them in denouncing the acts and 
demanding their repeal at the next session of Congress. These 
resolutions are of great importance as the first assertion of the 
power of the states, through their legislatures, to judge whether 
the laws passed by Congress are valid (constitutional) or not. 

The Alien and Sedition acts furnished fine campaign mate- 269. Defeat 
rial for the Republicans, who could now change their poor role ^lists in the 
of champions of France for the popular cause of the defense of election of 
the Constitution and the dignity of the states. Aided by dissen- 
sions in the Federalist party between the followers of Hamilton 
and those of Adams, the Republicans carried the presidential elec- 
tion of 1800 for Jefferson and Burr, and secured a majority in the 
new Congress. The Federalists had bent the bow of authority 
too far, and it snapped. They never regained control of the gov- 
ernment, although they continued to put a presidential candidate 
in the field and to poll a few votes until the election of 18 16. 

The last acts of the Federalists before their retirement on the 270. The 
fourth of March, 1801, showed a somewhat petty and tricky attemprto 

party spirit. As the Constitution then stood, the President and keep Jefferson 

, ■ , out of the 

Vice President were not voted for separately, but each elector presidency 

wrote down two names on his ballot. The candidate getting 
the highest number of votes was President, and the man with the 
next highest, Vice President. In the close election of 1796 the 
Republican Jefferson had been elected Vice President because 
not all the Federalist electors had written the name of Pinckney 
for second place on the ticket with John Adams. In the elec- 
tion of 1800, because all the Republican electors did wnto. the 
name of Aaron Burr on the ballot with Jefferson, these two 
candidates received the same number of votes. Of course every 
Republican elector meant to vote for Jefferson for President and 
Burr for Vice President. But Burr was an ambitious politician, 



204 



11 le New Republic 



271. Adams 
appoints the 
" midnight 
judges," 
March 3, 1801 



and when he found he had as many votes as Jefferson he was 
willing to contest the presidency with him. The House of Repre- 
sentatives, with whom the choice lay (Constitution, Art. II, sect, i, 
clause 2), was the Federalist House elected in the exciting year 
1798. After a sharp contest it chose Jefferson. The next Con- 
gress passed the twelfth amendment to the Constitution, which 
was ratified by the states in 1804, providing for the election of 
President and Vice President '' in distinct ballots," each elector 
writing his choice for each office (see note, p. 178). 




The City of Washington in 1800 

The Federalists, having lost control of the executive and leg- 
islative branches of the government by the elections of 1800, 
made a desperate attempt to hold the judicial branch at least. 
In its closing days the Federalist Congress created several new 
United States judgeships, many more than the judicial business 
of the country demanded, and the President filled the offices 
with stanch Federalists. These new officers were nicknamed 
the " midnight judges," because Adams was occupied until far 
into the evening of his last full day of office (March 3, 1801) 
in signing their commissions. 



Federalists and Republicans 205 

Early the next morning, without waiting to shake hands with 
the new President, Adams left the White House for his home 
in Massachusetts, where he lived long enough to see his illus- 
trious son, John Quincy Adams, elected to the presidency (1824) 
by the party of this same Jefferson whom he had so rudely re- 
fused to congratulate. 

The ungracious exit of the Federalists in 1801 and the bitter 272. services 
sectional opposition of the New England group to the Republi- aiist^sutes-' 
can administration for the fifteen years following must not ob- ™®° 
scure the great merits of the party during its years, of power 
(i 789-1801). On the day of Jefferson's inauguration the Colum- 
biafi Centinel of Boston, the leading Federalist paper in New 
England, published a long and true list of the benefits which 
that party had bestowed on the nation : peace secured with Eng- 
land, France, and Spain ; credit restored abroad and the finances 
set in order at home ; a navy created, domestic manufactures 
encouraged, and foreign trade stimulated. It pointed with just 
pride to the constructive statesmanship of Hamilton and Gou- 
verneur Morris ; the diplomatic skill of Jay, Marshall, and the 
Pinckneys ; the honest, able, courageous administrations of 
Washington and Adams. The services of these men to the 
country were great and lasting. It would be difficult to prove 
that our government has been better administered in any sub- 
sequent decade of our history than it was in that first decade 
of Federalism. 

The Jeffersonian Policies 

The White House, which John Adams left so unceremoniously 273. The 
on the morning of the day Thomas Jefferson entered it, was a washfngton^* 
big, square, unfinished building, more like the quarters of a 
cavalry regiment than the residence of the chief executive of 
a nation. Thrifty Abigail Adams wrote to a friend that a retinue 
of thirty servants would be needed to run the house when it 
was finished ; and meanwhile she dried the presidential washing 
in the unplastered East Room during stormy weather. The city 



son's political 
views 



206 The New Republic 

of Washington, to which the seat of government had been 
moved from Philadelphia in the summer of 1800/ was itself as 
crude and unfinished as the President's mansion. A couple of 
executive buildings stood near the White House, and more than 
a mile to the eastward the masons were at work on the wings 
of the Capitol. Instead of the stately Pennsylvania Avenue 
which now connects the Capitol and the White House, there 
was a miry road running across a sluggish creek. The residential 
part of the city consisted of a few cheerless boarding houses for 
the accommodation of the members of Congress, exiled to these 
wastes from the gay city of Philadelphia. '^ We need nothing 
here," wrote Gouverneur Morris, " but houses, men, women, 
and other little trifles of the kind to make our city perfect." 
274. jeffer- The n'ew President, with his large, loose figure, his careless 
carriage, his ill-fitting and snuff-stained apparel, his profuse and 
informal hospitality, presented as great a contrast to the stately 
poise and ceremony of Washington and Adams as the crude 
city on the Potomac did to the settled colonial dignity of Phila- 
delphia. Jefferson hated every appearance of " aristocracy." 
The French Revolution had estranged him from the manners of 
Europe as well as from its politics. His confidence was in the 
plain people of America. He wanted to see them continue a 
plain agricultural people, governing themselves in their local as- 
semblies. The national government at Washington should con- 
fine itself, he thought, to managing our dealings with foreign 
nations, a comparatively small task which could be performed 
by a few public servants. Army and navy were to be reduced, 
the public revenue was to be applied to paying the debt which 
the wicked war Scares of the Federalists had rolled up, and the 
government was no longer, as Jefferson phrased it, to ^' waste the 
labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." 

1 The states of Maryland and Virginia presented the government a tract of 
land ten miles square on the Potomac. Congress named the tract the District 
of Columbia. The city of Washington was built on the northern side of the river 
on the Maryland cession, and the land to the south of the Potomac was retroceded 
to Virginia in 1846. 




THOMAS JEFFERSON 

From the original portrait by Stuart in the Walker Art Building, 

Bowdoin College 



Federalists and Republicans 207 

Still Jefferson showed no desire to revolutionize the govern- 275. His 
ment, as some of the New England Federalists thought he ship 
would. In his inaugural address, which was couched in a digni- 
fied and conciliatory tone, he declared that Federalists and 
Republicans were one in common devotion to their country. 
He praised our government as a " successful experiment," and 
himself built on the foundations which the Federalists had 
laid. The Alien and Sedition laws expired with Adams's ad- 
ministration, and when the new Republican Congress had 
turned out the '' midnight judges " by the repeal of the Judici- 
ary Act, and restored the five-year period for naturalization, 
there was little to distinguish it from the Congresses of Wash- 
ington's administration. The tariff was retained, and the Bank 
was not disturbed. But strict economy was introduced in the 
expenditures of the government by the new Secretary of the 
Treasury, Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania, a naturalized Swiss, 
who is rated second only to Alexander Hamilton in the admin- 
istration of the finances of our country. Gallatin introduced 
the modern form of budget with its specific appropriations for 
each item of national expense. Army and navy appropriations 
were more than cut in two, and about 70 per cent of the 
revenue, or over $7,000,000 a year, was devoted to paying off 
the national debt. 

However, a piece of European diplomacy led President 276. Napo- 
Jefferson, whose twin political doctrines were strict adherence parte acquires 

to the letter of the Constitution and severe economy in the ex- Louisiana 

■' from Spain, 

penditures of the public moneys, himself to stretch the Con- 1800 
stitution further than any Federalist had ever done, and to 
expend at a stroke $15,000,000 of the national revenue. It 
will be remembered that the Peace of Paris of 1763, which 
closed the long struggle between France and England for the 
possession of the St. Lawrence and Ohio valleys, left the French 
without a foot of land on the continent of North America. The 
territory east of the Mississippi belonged to England, that west 
of it to Spain. In the year 1800 Napoleon Bonaparte, the new 



2o8 The New Republic 

master of France, conceived the idea of establishing a colonial 
empire in the New World, in the valley of the great river which 
had been opened over a century before by the heroic labors 
of the French explorers Marquette, Hennepin, and La Salle. 
He induced Spain, by the secret treaty of San Ildefonso, to 
cede to him an immense tract of land in America, extending 
north and south from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian 
borders, and east and west from the Mississippi River to the 
Rocky Mountains. The whole province was called " Louisiana," 
the name which La Salle had given the valley of the Mississippi, in 
honor of Louis XIV, when he planted the cross at the mouth 
of the great river in 1682. 
277. impor- When in the spring of the year 1802 Jefferson finally heard 
control of of this treaty of San Ildefonso, he was much disturbed by the 
forThe un^ited pi'ospect of having the control of the west bank and the mouth 
states of the Mississippi pass from the feeble administration of Spain 

to the powerful and aggressive government of Napoleon. The 
settlers in the Northwest Territory, in Kentucky, and in Ten- 
nessee were completely isolated from the seaports of the East 
by the mountains. Their lumber, wheat, hogs, and tobacco had 
to seek a market by way of the Mississippi, with its tributaries, 
the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee rivers. Three 
eighths of the commerce of the United States in 1800 passed 
through the mouth of the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. It 
was therefore absolutely necessary to the life of our nation that 
the important city of New Orleans, which controlled the mouth 
of the river, should not be converted from a port of deposit for 
the commerce of the western states and territories into an armed 
base of war in the great duel between France and England. 
Much as he disliked the latter country, Jefferson wrote to 
Robert R. Livingston, our minister in Paris, that " every eye 
in the United States was now turned to the affair of Louisi- 
ana," and that the moment Napoleon took possession of New 
Orleans we "must marry ourselves to the British fleet and 
nation." 



Federalists and Republicans 209 

The President's worst fears were realized when, in October, 278. jeffer- 
1802, the Spanish government, probably at the bidding of Loui^^ana*^^^ 

Napoleon, to whom Louisiana was just about to be handed fromNapo- 

.... . Icon, April 30, 

over, closed the mouth of the Mississippi by withdrawing the 1803 

right of unloading and reshipping secured by Pinckney's treaty 
of 1795 (see p. 199). Jefferson, knowing that it would be impos- 
sible to force Napoleon to open the river to our trade, secured 
an appropriation of $2,000,000 from Congress for the purpose 
of buying New Orleans and West Florida outright, and sent 
James Monroe to Paris to aid Livingston in the negotiation. 
At first Napoleon rejected any offer for New Orleans, but sud- 
denly changed his mind and urged his foreign minister, Talley- 
rand, to dispose of the whole province of Louisiana to the 
Americans. After the loss of an army under his brother-in-law 
Leclerc in the West Indies, Napoleon, with his characteristic 
caprice in shifting plans, had decided to abandon his colonial 
enterprise in the New World and confine his struggle with Great 
Britain to the Eastern Hemisphere. After much bargaining he 
accepted Livingston's offer of $15,000,000 for Louisiana, over 
$3,500,000 of which was to be paid back to our own citizens 
in the West for damage to their trade. The terms were agreed 
to April 30, 1803. 

The purchase of Louisiana was the most important event of 279. The 
American history in the first half of the nineteenth century, fanceorthe' 

It doubled the area of the United States and brought under Louisiana 

° Purchase 

our rule one of the most valuable tracts of land in the world. 
Fourteen states have been created wholly or in part out 
of the Louisiana territory. The population has grown from 
50,000 in 1804, of whom half were slaves, to over 18,000,000 
in 19 10. The cattle and timber of Montana, the wheat of 
Minnesota and the Dakotas, the corn of Kansas, and the sugar 
and cotton of Louisiana have been the source of rapidly in- 
creasing wealth to our country. By the census of 1900 the 
value of the farm property alone in these fourteen states was 
$6,724,855,132, or four hundred and fifty times what we paid 



2IO . The New Republic 

for the whole territory. At the imposing exposition held in St. 
Louis, the metropolis of the region, in 1904, to celebrate the 
one-hundredth anniversary of the purchase, the abounding popu- 
lation and prosperity of the states of the Louisiana Purchase 
were the admiration of millions of visitors. 

280. The Furthermore, the acquisition of Louisiana stimulated the in- 
ciark expe- terest of the government in the vast territory to the west of 
^8^^°°8 6 ^^^ Mississippi River. Less than two months after the cession 

of Louisiana to the United States, Jefferson commissioned 
Captain Meriwether Lewis, his private secretary, to head a 
scientific exploring party to the Far Northwest. Lewis associated 
with him William Clark, younger brother of George Rogers 
Clark of Revolutionary fame. After wintering at the mouth of 
the Missouri River, the Lewis and Clark expedition started west- 
ward in the spring of 1804 with a company of thirty -five men. 
They ascended the Missouri to its source, crossed the Rockies, 
and descended the Columbia River to the sea, making impor- 
tant studies, in their two and a half years' journey, of the natu- 
ral features of the country and the habits of the Indian tribes. 
Their remarkable expedition was an important factor in our 
claim to the Oregon country in our dispute with England forty 
years later. 

281. The The political consequences of the Louisiana Purchase were 
tionai aspect ^lot less important than its geographical consequences. No 
of the Lou- clause of the Constitution of the United States could be found 
chase giving the President the right to purchase foreign territory by 

a treaty which promised (as the third article of the Louisiana 
treaty promised) that ''the inhabitants of the ceded territory 
should be incorporated into the Union of the United States 
and admitted as soon as possible ... to the enjoyment of all 
rights, advantages, and immunities of the United States." Jef- 
ferson, who for twelve years had been protesting almost daily 
against the assumption by the executive of powers not granted 
by the Constitution, was much disturbed at finding himself fol- 
lowing the same path in the purchase of Louisiana. He at first 



Federalists and Republicans 2 1 1 

insisted on having an amendment to the Constitution passed, 
giving the people's sanction to the purchase. But his friends 
in Congress persuaded him that it was both unnecessary and 
unwise, — unnecessary because the Constitution gives the Presi- 
dent and Senate the right to conclude treaties, and unwise 
because during the long delay necessary to secure such an amend- 
ment Napoleon might again change his mind and deprive us of 
our fine bargain ; or because Spain, hearing that Napoleon had 
broken the treaty of San Ildefonso by the sale of the province 
to another power, might enter her protest at Washington. Jef- 
ferson acquiesced in the judgment of his friends, and said noth- 
ing about the necessity for an amendment in his message to the 
new Congress which assembled in December, 1803.^ 

That the vast province of Louisiana would ever be incorpo- 282. jeffer- 
rated into the United States seemed questionable to Jefferson. sJ°enrt?ens 

He wrote in 1804, "Whether we remain one confederacy or the central 

^' ^ authority 

fall into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies I believe not 

very important to the happiness of either part." Meanwhile, 

however, by bringing within the jurisdiction of Congress a new 

territory which doubled the size of the United States, Jefferson 

enormously increased the authority of the central government, 

— an authority which in theory he combated. 

Aside from the opposition of the New England Federalists, 283. jeffer- 

who might be counted upon to oppose any policy of the Jeffer- height o^\is 

son administration, the country enthusiastically indorsed the pur- popularity, 

... 1804-1805 

chase of Louisiana. President Jefferson was at the height of his 

popularity. In 1804 he was reelected by 162 electoral votes 

to 14 for his Federalist opponent, C. C. Pinckney. At the same 

time with the election returns came the news of the success of 

1 Congress established the extreme southern part of the Louisiana province 
as the territory of Orleans, and provided for its administration by a governor, 
a secretary, and judges appointed by the President of the United States. For 
over a year there was no elected assembly in Orleans ; there was not even the 
ancient civil right of trial by jury. The inhabitants of the territory were made 
subjects, not citizens, of the United States, and it was not until eight years later 
that they were admitted (as the state of Louisiana, 1812) to the " rights, advan- 
tages, and immunities" promised them in the treaty of 1803. 



212 



The New Republic 



284. The 
conspiracy of 
Aaron Burr, 
1805-1807 



285. The 
trials of Jef- 
ferson's 
second ad- 
ministration, 
1805-1809 



the small American fleet in the Mediterranean Sea, under the 
brave commanders Preble, Bainbridge, and Decatur, in the war 
against the insolent pasha of Tripoli, who was attacking our com- 
merce and levying blackmail on our government. Our diplomacy 
and arms successful abroad ; our territory doubled at home ; our 
debt reduced, in spite of the purchase of Louisiana ; our people 
united, save for a few malcontents in New England and Dela- 
ware, — such was the record of the years 1801-1805. 

But Jefferson's second term was filled with disappointment 
and chagrin. The country was distressed by the conspiracy of 
Aaron Burr. That brilliant but unprincipled politician, while 
still Vice President, had offered himself as a candidate for gov- 
ernor of New York, and being defeated through the efforts of 
Alexander Hamilton, had challenged Hamilton to a duel and 
killed him at the first shot (July 11, 1804). Made a political and 
social outcast by this act. Burr conceived a desperate plan for 
retrieving his fortunes and reputation. Just what he intended 
to do is uncertain, — whether to establish an independent state 
in the Mississippi valley, or to seize the city of New Orleans 
and carve an " empire for the Burr dynasty " out of Spanish 
territory to the southwest of the United States. At any rate, he 
threw the whole western country into commotion for two years, 
until he was abandoned and betrayed by his treacherous accom- 
plice. General James Wilkinson. In 1807 Burr was seized in 
Spanish Florida and brought to Richmond for trial. John Mar- 
shall, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, a Federalist ap- 
pointed by President Adams, presided over the trial. Jefferson 
was extremely anxious to have Burr convicted ; but the jury, 
under Marshall's charge, found no " overt act of treason " to 
justify a verdict of '' guilty," and Burr was discharged, to spend 
the rest of his long life in obscurity and misery. 

But the Burr trial was of small account among Jefferson's 
troubles, when compared with the failure of his " peace policy." 
European diplomacy favored the reduction of our army and 
navy in Jefferson's first term ; but in his second term the 



Federalists and Republicans 213 

fortunes of European war broke down this peace policy, and, 
in spite of his desperate efforts to meet French and English 
violence by diplomacy, entreaties, proclamations, and embargoes, 
the war approached, which was to find us shockingly unprepared 
in men and ships and discipline. 

The War of 18 12 

The unholy ambition of one man kept the civilized world in 286. Napo- 

a turmoil during the first fifteen years of the nineteenth cen- parte^the^' 

turv, and stirred war from the shores of Lake Erie to the tyrant of 

-^' ^ Europe, 

Steppes of Russia. Napoleon Bonaparte, made master of France 1805-1815 

by his sword at the age of thirty (1799), found France too 
small a theater for his genius, and aimed at nothing less than 
the domination of the continent of Europe and the destruc- 
tion of the British colonial empire. The latter object was frus- 
trated when Admiral Nelson shattered the combined fleets of 
France and Spain off Cape Trafalgar, October 21, 1805. But 
a few weeks later, by his victory over the armies of Russia 
and Austria in the tremendous battle of Austerlitz (the " battle 
of the three emperors "), Napoleon began to realize his am- 
bition of dominating the continent. Henceforth the British were 
masters of the ocean, but for ten years Napoleon was master 
of the land. 

Failing to destroy Great Britain's fleet. Napoleon sought to 287. The 
kill her commerce. By decrees issued from Berlin and Milan in ^a^^etween 

1806 and 1807 he declared the continent closed to British goods, Napoleon and 
' ^ Great Britain 

and ordered the seizure of any vessel that had touched at a 

British port. Great Britain replied by Orders in Council, for- 
bidding neutral vessels to trade with any countries under Napo- 
leon's control (which meant all of Europe but Scandinavia and 
Turkey), unless such vessels had touched at a British port. These 
decrees and orders meant the utter ruin of neutral trade, for the 
English seized all merchant vessels that did not touch at British 
ports, and the French seized all that did. 



214 J^^^ Nezv Republic 

288. The It was the American trade that suffered especially. During 

ocean trade the nine years' war between France and England (1793-1802) 
the United States had built up an immense volume of shipping. 
Her stanch, swift vessels, manned by alert tars, were the 
favorite carriers of the merchandise of South America, the 
Indies, and the Far East to all the ports of Europe. Our own 
exports too — the fish and lumber of New England, the cotton 
and rice of the South, the wheat and live stock of the trans- 
Allegheny country — had increased threefold (from $20,000,000 
to $60,000,000) since the inauguration of Washington. Our 
shipments of cotton alone, thanks to the invention in 1793 of 
the cotton " gin " (engine) for separating the seed, grew from 
200,000 pounds in 1791 to over 50,000,000 pounds in 1805. 
In the latter year some 70,000 tons were added to our merchant 
marine, requiring the addition of 4200 seamen. Sailors' wages 
rose from $8 to $24 a month. Hundreds of foreigners became 
naturalized in order to enjoy the huge profits of American ship- 
owners. Some idea of the volume of our foreign trade in pro- 
portion to the size and wealth of our country at the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, as compared with that at the close of 
the century, can be realized from the following figures : in 1900, 
when our population was almost 80,000,000 and our wealth 
$100,000,000,000, less than 10 per cent of our foreign trade 
(only 816,000 tons) was carried in American ships ; in 18 10 our 
population was less than 8,000,000 and our estimated wealth 
$2,000,000,000, but 91 per cent of our foreign trade (980,000 
tons) was carried in our own vessels.^ 



1 The decay of our merchant marine since the Civil War has been deplor- 
able. Most of our merchant ships were captured by Confederate cruisers or 
turned into war vessels during the war ; and our merchant marine was not rebuilt 
when peace came, because the high duties on iron, steel, copper, lumber, and 
cordage made shipbuilding unprofitable. Senator Frye of Maine in 1891 pro- 
posed a national subsidy (" help ") for American vessels carrying our mail, but 
it was not enough to encourage shipbuilding. Again, ten years later (1901), 
Senator Frye labored to get Congress to appropriate ^9,000,000 "a year for thirty 
years for the subsidizing of American shipping, but the agricultural and manu- 
facturing interests defeated his bill. 



Federalists and Reptiblicans 



215 



It was this immense foreign trade, the chief source of our 289. Great 

country's wealth, that was threatened with ruin by Napoleon's cises%he ^^'^" 

decrees and the British Orders in Council. Jefferson's reduction " "S^J^,P* 

'' search " on 

of the navy far below the point necessary to protect American our merchant 

vessels 

commerce left diplomacy as his only weapon. He sent William 
Pinkney to London to cooperate there with our minister, James 
Monroe, in making a treaty to replace the Jay Treaty, which 
expired in 1806. But the British court showed its contempt for 
our naval weakness by negotiating with Monroe a treaty so in- 
sulting to our commercial independence that Jefferson would 
not even send it to the 
Senate for consideration. 
Furthermore, many Brit- 
ish frigates cruised along 
our shores from New 
England to Georgia, 
stopping our ships at 
will, boarding them, and 
taking off scores of sail- 
ors on the ground that 
they were English de- 
serters. To be sure, the 
provocation of England 
was great. At a time 
when she needed every 

man and gun in her desperate struggle with Napoleon, British 
seamen were leaving her ships by hundreds to take advantage 
of the high wages, good food, and humane treatment which 
they found aboard the American vessels. If the British lieu- 
tenant conducted his examination of an American crew in a 
summary fashion, and '' impressed " a good many real Ameri- 
cans among the suspected deserters to serve the guns of the 
British frigates, he thought he was only erring on the right 
side. After all, Englishmen and Americans were not so easy 
to tell apart. 




Impressing American Seamen 



2l6 



The New Republic 



The climax was reached when the British ship Leopard opened 
fire on the American frigate Chesapeake off the Virginia coast, 
June 2 2, 1807, because the American refused to stop to be 
searched for deserters. Three of the Chesapeake^s men were 
killed and eighteen wounded before she surrendered. It was an 
act of war. The country was stirred as it had not been since 
the news of "the battle of Lexington. Resolutions poured in 
upon the President pledging the signers to support the most 
rigorous measures of resistance. 

But Jefferson had no more rigorous measures of resistance 
to propose, in the absence of a navy, than an embargo on foreign 
commerce. By an act of Congress of December 22, 1807, all 
ships were forbidden to leave our harbors for foreign ports. 
The double purpose of the embargo was to starve Europe into 
showing a proper respect for our commerce and to prevent our 
ships from capture. The latter object the embargo certainly 
accomplished, for if the ships did not sail, they could hardly 
be taken. But the remedy was worse than the disease. The 
merchants of New England preferred risking the loss of a few 
men and vessels to seeing their ships tied idly to the wharves 
and their merchandise spoiling in warehouses. They even ac- 
cused Jefferson of being willing to ruin their shipping in order to 
be avenged on the Federalists and to further his pet industry of 
agriculture. A perfect storm of protest arose from the commer- 
cial classes of the country. It was evident that the continuance 
of the embargo would mean the overthrow of the Republican 
party, if not civil war ; and the hated act, which cost New Eng- 
land merchants alone a loss of $8,000,000 in fifteen montiis, was 
repealed March i, 1809, and a Nonintercourse Act with Great 
Britain and France passed in its stead. Three days later Jefferson 
turned over the government to his successor, James Madison. 

Madison had rendered the country magnificent services a 
quarter of a century earlier in the convention which framed the 
Constitution of the United States, but he seemed to have lost all 
power of initiative. He neither prepared for war nor developed 



Federalists and Repiddicaiis 2 1 7 

any effective policy of peace. He was singularly lacking in dip- 
lomatic judgment, allowing himself, in his anxiety for peace, to 
believe too readily the word of any one who brought a welcome 
report. When the new British minister, Erskine, announced in 
1809 that his country would withdraw the Orders in Council, 
Madison hastily reopened commerce with England, without 
waiting to see whether the British ministry would sanction 
Erskine's promise or not. To Madison's chagrin the promise 
was disavowed and the minister recalled. The next move of 
the administration was an attempt to bribe England and France 
to bid against each other for our trade. Congress repealed the 
Nonintercourse Act in 18 10 and substituted for it Macon's 
bill, which provided that as soon as either France or England 
withdrew its decrees against our shipping, the Nonintercourse 
Act should be revived against the other country. 

This was too good a chance for the wily Napoleon to let 293. Napo- 
slip. He announced (August 5, 18 10) that the Berlin and Milan ^ink^s^^^" 
Decrees were repealed, and called upon the American President Madison, 
to redeem his promise by prohibiting intercourse with Great 
Britain. Again Madison jumped at the chance of bringing Great 
Britain to terms by diplomacy. In spite of the British ministry's 
warning that Napoleon would not keep his word (a judgment 
amply proved by the facts), Madison • issued a proclamation 
reviving the Nonintercourse Act against Great Britain if she 
should not have repealed her Orders in Council before Feb- 
ruary 2, 181 1. The day passed without any word from the Brit- 
ish ministry, and again Congress forbade all trade with Great 
Britain and her colonies. 

The year 181 1 brought other fuel to feed the fires of anti- 294. New 
British sentiment. In May our frigate Pr-esident^ chasing a Jy^Great 
British cruiser which had impressed a citizen of Massachusetts, Britain, iSn 
was fired upon by the British sloop of war Little Belt, which 
was forced by the American ship to strike her colors. The 
exploit was hailed as a fitting revenge for the Chesapeake out- 
rage four years earlier. In November, William Henry Harrison, 



2i8 The New Republic 

governor of the Northwest, defeated the Indians under the 

great chief Tecumseh at Tippecanoe Creek in the Indiana 

territory, and wrote home, " The Indians had an ample supply 

of the best British glazed powder, and some of their guns had 

been sent them so short a time before the action that they 

were not yet divested of the list coverings in which they are 

imported." The suspicions of our government, therefore, that 

the British had been inciting the Indians on our northwestern 

frontier since St. Clair's disastrous defeat twenty years before, 

seemed to be confirmed. 

295. Con- The new Congress which met in the early winter of 1811 

gress, under . , ^ . i t, i i ,, t 1 

Henry Clay's contamed a group 01 energetic men, the war hawks as John 

Clares war on" ^^i^^olph called them, who were determined that the independ- 

Great Britain, ence and disunity of the United States should be respected. 
June 18, 1812 o -^ r 

They were of the new generation that had grown up since the 

Revolutionary War, and their confidence in the present great- 
ness and future promise of the United States was unbounded. 
They demanded that the impotent diplomacy which had humili- 
ated our government since the end of the first administration of 
Jefferson — the so-called " peaceful war" of embargo and non- 
intercourse — should be abandoned. The leader of the " war 
hawks " was Henry Clay, a Virginian born, who had moved out 
to the new state of Kentucky as a young law student, and had 
rapidly raised himself, by his great gifts of intellect and oratory, 
to be the first citizen of the state. Clay was elected Speaker of 
the House in the new Congress, and as he made up his com- 
mittees it became evident that the war party was to direct the 
legislative policy of the session. '' The period has arrived," re- 
ported the Committee on Foreign Affairs, " when it is the sacred 
duty of Congress to call upon the patriotism and resources of 
the country." Cheves of South Carolina called for an appro- 
priation of more than half the income of the government for 
the building of thirty-two warships, and lost his motion by only 
three votes out of a House of 141 members. Clay descended 
from the chair and urged the war in such strains of oratory as 



Federalists and Repiiblicafis 219 

had not been heard in Congress for twenty years. President 

Madison was swept off his feet by the war current. His 

message of June i, 18 12, reviewed the outrages of the British 

in stopping our ships, seizing our seamen, inciting the Indians 

against our borders, blockading our ports, and refusing to repeal 

the obnoxious Orders in Council. On June 18 Congress, by a 

vote of- almost two to one, declared war on Great Britain. 

The War of 18 12 was the work of Henry Clay. He mar- 296. Henry 

shaled the war party in Congress, and solidified that war senti- sponsibiiity 

ment in the South and West which made Madison believe that ^^^ ^^® "^^^ 

of 1812 

the success of the Republicans and his own reelection in the 
autumn of 1 8 1 2 depended on the substitution of arms for 
diplomacy. Clay held before the farmers of the Mississippi and 
Ohio valleys the vision of an easy conquest of Canada, and 
killed in the House the proposal of the moderates to make one 
more effort for peace by the dispatch of James Bayard of 
Delaware as special envoy to the court of Great Britain. Had 
Bayard gone, the war would probably have been averted ; for 
just at the moment when Madison signed the declaration of 
war. Great Britain, sincerely anxious to preserve peace with 
the United States, repealed the offensive Orders in Council. 
But there was no cable to bring the instantaneous news of the 
British ministry's surrender, so the unfortunate war between 
the sister nations of the English tongue began just when Napo- 
leon Bonaparte led his army of half a million men across the 
Russian frontier, hoping to crush the last great power of the 
European continent that dared to resist his despotic will. 

The United States was woefully unprepared for war. Our 297. our 
regular army numbered less than 7000 soldiers, many of them the^canadian 
raw recruits under untrained commanders. Our navy consisted frontier 
of 15 ships to England's 1000. The New England States pro- 
tested against "Mr. Madison's war" (which they would better 
have called " Mr. Clay's war "), and Vermont and Connecticut 
refused point-blank to furnish a man of their militia to invade 
Canada. The year 1 8 1 2 saw our commander at Detroit, William 



220 



The New Republic 



Hull, court-martialed and sentenced to death for the timid aban- 
donment of his post, and our generals at the other end of Lake 
Erie fighting duels over the mutual charge of cowardice instead 
of advancing together against the enemy. 

The conquest of Canada, which Clay had boasted could be ac- 
complished by the militia of Kentucky alone, showed little pros- 
pect of fulfillment in the campaign of 1812-1813. But for the 
victory of Oliver H. Perry's little fleet on Lake Erie (Septem- 
ber 10, 1 8 13) and Thomas MacDonough's deliverance of Lake 
Champlain (September 11, 18 14), we could hardly have been 




The War of 181 2 on the Canadian Border 



saved from a British invasion from Canada, which would have 
cost us the Northwest Territory and the valley of the Hudson. 
Cheered by Perry's famous dispatch from Lake Erie, "We 
have met the enemy and they are ours," William Henry Harri- 
son, who had succeeded Hull, was able to recapture Detroit 
and drive the British across the river, inflicting a severe defeat 
on them in Canadian territory (October 5, 18 13). This was the 
nearest we came to a " conquest of Canada " ; for at the 
eastern end of Lake Erie our last attempt at invasion, under 
General Jacob Brown, resulted only in the drawn battle of 
Lundy's Lane (July 25, 181 4). 



Federalists and Repttblicans 221 

In August, 1814, a British force of less than 5000 men sailed 300. The 
up the Potomac and raided the city of Washington, after put- Washington 
ting to disgraceful flight the 7500 raw militia troops hastily August, 1814 
gathered at Bladensburg to defend the national capital. The 
British burned the White House, the Capitol, and some depart- 
ment buildings, and inflicted about $1,500,000 worth of wanton 
damage on the property of the city. They then departed for 
Baltimore, where a similar raid was frustrated by the alertness of 
the Maryland militia and the spirited defense of Fort McHenry 
before the city (September 12, 1814). It was the sight of our 
flag still waving on the ramparts of Fort McHenry, after a 
night's bombardment, that inspired Francis Key's patriotic 
song, "The Star-Spangled Banner." 

In sharp contrast with our disasters on land, the war on the 301. The 
ocean, despite the great inferiority of our navy in point of ^^ 
numbers, was a series of surprising triumphs for the American 
ships. The exploits of our frigates President^ United States, and 
Constitntiofi (" Old Ironsides ") kept the country in a fever of 
rejoicing. On all the lines of world commerce — in the Atlantic, 
the Pacific, and the Indian oceans, off the coast of New Eng- 
land, among the Indies, in the English waters, and beyond the 
Cape of Good Hope — the privateers and merchantmen of both 
countries played the game of hide and seek. In the first seven 
months of the war over 500 British merchantmen were taken 
by the swift Yankee privateers, and before the war was over 
some 2000 prizes were captured. The British had boasted at 
the beginning of the war that they would not let an American 
craft cross from New York to Staten Island, but before the war 
was over they were themselves paying 1 5 per cent insurance on 
vessels crossing the English Channel. However, the Americans 
were the worst sufferers by the war, their exports falling from 
$110,000,000 in 1807 to $7,000,000 in 1814; while the 
retreat of Napoleon from Moscow in 1 8 1 2 and his overwhelm- 
ing defeat in the three days' battle of Leipzig the next year 
again opened the continent of Europe to British trade. 



222 The New Republic 

302. The With the cessation of the long and severe commercial war 
Ghent De- between Napoleon and Great Britain, the causes of the war 
cember24, between Great Britain and the United States — impressments, 

right of search, blockades, embargoes, nonintercourse acts — 
were all removed. Peace was signed by the American and 
British commissioners, at the city of Ghent in the Netherlands, 
on Christmas Eve, 1814. The peace restored the conditions 
before the war, and referred to commissioners the settlement 
of boundary disputes between the United States and Canada. 

303. Andrew Before the news of the treaty of Ghent reached New York, 
victo^rjTat however (February 11, 181 5), two events of importance took 

New Orleans, j^^^ -^^ America. The British, failing in their attack on Balti- 
january 8, ^^ ' o 

1815 more, had sailed for the West Indies and there joined several 

thousand veteran troops under General Pakenham, just freed 
from service against Napoleon's armies in the Spanish peninsula. 
Their purpose was to seize New Orleans, paralyze the trade of 
the Mississippi Valley, and perhaps hold Louisiana for exchange 
at the close of the war for territory in the Northwest. But Andrew 
Jackson, a Tennessee frontiersman and Indian fighter of Scotch- 
Irish stock, who was in command of our small army in the 
Mississippi territory, was a man of different caliber from the 
generals on the northern frontier. Pressing every man and mule 
in the city of New Orleans into service, he constructed a hasty 
but effective line of fortifications below the. city, and when the 
British veterans attacked with confidence, he drove them back 
with terrible slaughter, laying 2000 of their number on the field 
in a battle of twenty minutes' duration (January 8, 18 15). Jack- 
son, henceforth the " hero of New Orleans," was rewarded in 
the following years by the command against the Indians of Florida 
(18 1 7), the governorship of the Florida territory (182 1), a seat 
in the United States Senate (1823), and the presidency of the 
United States (1828). If the Atlantic cable or the swift modern 
steamship had existed in 18 14, it would have brought the news 
of the treaty of peace in time to turn Pakenham 's expedition 
back from the Mississippi, to prevent one of the bloodiest battles 



Federalists aiid Reptiblicajis 223 

ever fought on American soil, and perhaps to keep from the pages 
of American history the record of the administration of the most 
masterful of our Presidents between Washington and Lincoln. 

While Jackson was bringing the war to a victorious close for 304. opposi. 
the American side in the far South, the discontent of the New Engiand^to^ 
England States with " Mr. Madison's war " was ripening into ^^® ^^^ 
serious opposition to the administration. Every state north of 
Maryland with a seacoast had voted against Madison (that is, 
against the war) in the election of 1 8 1 2 ; and had not the west- 
ern counties of Pennsylvania been strong enough to carry the 
twenty-five electoral votes of that state to Madison's column, 
his rival, De Witt Clinton (fusion candidate of the Federalists and 
the " peace Republicans "), would have been elected. The sec- 
tional character of the war is strikingly shown by the fact that 
of the $11,000,000 loan authorized by Congress in 181 2, New 
England, which was the richest section of the country, sub- 
scribed for less than $1,000,000, There were even those in 
New England who let their disgust with the policy of the admin- 
istration carry them into treason, and recouped the losses that 
Madison and Clay brought to their commerce, by selling beef 
to the British army in Canada. 

Ever since the defeat of the Federalist party in 1800 and the 305. The 
adoption of many of its principles by Jefferson, an irreconcilable vention, De^' 
branch of the party in New England had maintained its bitter cumber 15, 
opposition to the Jeffersonian administrations, to the predomi- 
nance of the agricultural interests, and to the perpetuation of the 
so-called " Virginia dynasty " in our government. The declara- 
tion of the war with England by the votes of the Southern and 
Western states was to these Federalist representatives of the New 
England commercial classes the climax of a long list of injuries. 
" We are in no better relation to the Southern states," cried one 
of these extreme Federalists, " than a conquered people." By 
the end of 1 8 1 3 about 250 vessels were lying idle at the docks 
of Boston alone. Petitions began to come in to the Massachu- 
setts legislature from many towns, praying the state to take 



224 T^^^ New Republic 

steps toward getting the Constitution of the United States 
amended in such a way as to " secure them from further evils." 
At the suggestion of Massachusetts the five New England 
States sent delegates to meet in a convention at Hartford, 
Connecticut, December 15, 18 14. These delegates, twenty-six 
in number, represented the remnant of the Federalist party. 
They denounced the '' ruinous war " and proposed a number of 
amendments to the Constitution, designed to lessen the power 
of the slaveholding agricultural South, to secure the interests 
of commerce, to prevent the hasty admission of new Western 
states, and to check the succession of Virginia Presidents. After 
a month's session they adjourned to the following June, and 
their messengers carried their demands to Washington. 
306. The The messengers arrived only to find themselves in the midst 

theFederaiist of general rejoicing over the news of Jackson's victory at New 
party, 1816 Orleans and the tidings of the peace from Ghent, which reached 
Washington on the same day. The triumph of the Republicans 
was complete, and the crestfallen Hartford envoys returned to 
New England bearing the doom of the Federalist party. In the 
presidential election of the following year (18 16) the Federalists 
for the last time put a candidate into the field, Rufus King of 
New York. But King got only 34 electoral votes to 182 for 
his Republican rival, James Monroe, Madison's Secretar}^ of 
State, who continued for another eight years the " dynasty " of 
Virginia Republicans inaugurated by Thomas Jefferson in 1801. 



REFERENCES 

Launching the Government: J. B. MacM aster, History of the People 
of the United States, Vol. I, chap, vi ; Henry Adams, History of the 
United States of AjTierica during the Ad77iinistrations of fefferson and 
Madison, Vol. I, chaps, i-vi; J. S. Bassett, The Federalist Systetn 
(American Nation Series), chaps, i-xiii ; F. A. Walker, The Making 
of the Nation, chaps, v-vii ; Davis R. Dewey, Fifiancial History of the 
United States, chaps, iii, iv ; Justin Winsor, N'arrative and Critical His- 
tory of America, Vol. VII, chap, vi; biographies of George Washington 



Federalists and Republicans 225 

by Paul Leicester Ford, Woodrow Wilson, and Henry Cabot 
Lodge; biographies of Alexander Hamilton by William G. Sumner, 
Henry Cabot Lodge, and J. T. Morse, Jr. 

The ^Reign of Federalism : Bassett, chaps, xiv-xix ; MacMaster, 
Vol. II, chaps. X, xi; Walker, chap, viii ; J. W. Foster,/^ Centuiy of 
Diplomacy, chap, v ; John B. Moore, Afnerican Diplomacy, chaps, ii, 
iii; Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency, chaps, iv, v; A. B. 
Hart, A^nerican History told by Contemporaries, Vol. Ill, Nos. 83-105 ; 
H. Von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States, Vol. I, 
chaps; iii, iv. 

The Jeffersonian Policies : Edward Channing, The feffersoniajt Sys- 
tem (Am. Nation), chaps, i-xvii ; R. G. Thwaites (ed.), Original fozirnal 
of the Lewis and Clark Expedition ; MacMaster, Vols. II, III ; Adams, 
Vols. I-IV; Hart, Vol. Ill, Nos. 106, 109, 115; F. A. Ogg, The Open- 
ing of the Mississippi, chaps, x-xiv ; W. F. McCaleb, The Aaron Burr 
Conspiracy ; biographies of Jefferson by Paul Leicester Ford, J. T. 
Morse, Jr., and H. C. Merwin. 

The War of 1812 : Channing, chaps, xviii-xx; K. C. Babcock, The 
Rise of American A^ationality (Am. Nation), chaps, i-xi ; WiNSOR, Vol. 
VII, chaps, v-vii; Hart, Vol. Ill, Nos. 116-129; Cambridge Modem 
History, Vol. VII, chap, x; A. T. Mahan, The War of 1812; Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, The Naval War of 1812 ; Carl Schurz, Henry Clay 
(American Statesmen Series). 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Condition of the Country at the Inauguration of Washington: 
Walker, pp. 63-72 ; Hart, Vol. Ill, Nos. 10-36; MacMaster, Vol. I, 
pp. i-ioi ; Vol. II, pp. 1-24; Bassett, pp. 163-177; Winsor, The 
Westward Movement, pp. 29^-A^ A- 

2. The Jay Treaty : Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America, 
Vol. VII, pp. 463-471 ; The Westward Movement, pp. 462-484 ; George 
Pellew, foh?i fay (Am. Statesmen), chaps, x, xi ; Hart, Vol. Ill, 
No. 97; Bassett, pp. 125-135; Moore, pp. 201-208; William Mc- 
Donald, Select Documents, No. 14 (for text). 

3. The French War of 1798-1799 : MacMaster, Vol. II, pp. 370-388, 
428-434 ; Walker, pp. 137-143 ; Winsor, Narrative and Critical His- 
tory of America, Vol. VII, pp. 361-368 ; A. J. Woodburn, American 
Political History, Vol. I, pp. 162-179. 

4. The Lewis and Clark Expedition: Roosevelt, The Wimiing of the 
West, Vol. IV, pp. 308-328; Hart, Vol. Ill, No. 115; Channing, pp. 
86-99; Thwaites, Rocky Mountain Exploration, pp. 92-187. 



226 The New Republic 

5. The War Hawks in the Twelfth Congress: MacMaster, Vol. Ill, 
pp. 426-458 ; Walker, pp. 220-227 ; Babcock, pp. 50-63 ; Adams, 
Vol. VII, pp. 1 13-175 ; ScHURZ, Vol. I, chap, v; Schouler, History of 
the United States, Vol. II, pp. 334-356. 

6. The Louisiana Purchase : MacMaster, Vol. II, pp. 620-63 5 ; Chan- 
NiNG, pp. 47-72; Adams, Vol. II, pp. 1 16-134; William M. Sloane, 
in the A7?ierican Historical Reviezv, Vol. IV, pp. 439 ff. ; Roosevelt, 
Vol. IV, pp. 258-282; Hart, Foundations of American Foreign Policy^ 
pp. 185-209; MacDonald, No. 24 (for text of treaty). 



PART IV. NATIONAL VERSUS 
SECTIONAL INTERESTS 



PART IV. NATIONAL VERSUS 
SECTIONAL INTERESTS 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE GROWTH OF A NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS 

'' The Era of Good Feeling " 

The close of the second war with England (1815) marks an 307. The 
epoch in American history. During the quarter of a century ^mpietes"ur 
which elapsed between the inauguration of George Washington independence 
and the conclusion of the treaty at Ghent, the United States 
was very largely influenced by European politics. Our independ- 
ence was acknowledged but not respected. Neither the French 
republic nor the English monarchy accorded us the courtesies 
due to a sister power ; neither Napoleon nor the ministers of 
George III heeded our protests against the violation of a neu- 
tral nation's rights. The parties which called themselves Repub- 
lican and Federalist might just as well have been called the 
French and the English party. Foreign wars and rumors of 
war, treaties, protests, embassies, absorbed the energies of the 
administration at Washington. Many of our greatest statesmen 
were serving their country in foreign capitals. The eyes of our 
people were turned toward the Atlantic to welcome our swift 
packets bringing news from Paris, London, and Madrid. But 
with the '' universal peace " of 18 15 all this was changed. We 
turned our back on Europe, and faced the problems of our own 
growing land. The group of young statesmen, led by Henry 
Clay, who had precipitated the War of 18 12 to free us from 

229 



230 National versus Sectional Inte^^ests 

humiliating dependence on the orders of European cabinets, 
were imbued with one idea, — the boundless resources of the 
United States of America. A common devotion of all sections 
of our country seemed to be the only condition necessary for 
the development of those resources. 

308. A wave When James Monroe was inaugurated on the fourth of 
enthusiasm March, 18 1 7, the country was already at the full tide of the 
fouows the enthusiasm for expansion which followed the conclusion of peace 

at Ghent. Our regular army had been thoroughly reorganized 
and raised to a peace footing of 10,000 men. The immense 
sum of $8,000,000 had been appropriated for a new navy. 
The tariff rates, which had been doubled in 18 12 to provide 
a revenue for carrying on the war, were still kept up, and 
even slightly increased, by the tariff bill of 18 16, whose 
object was to encourage and protect the rising manufactures 
which both North and South hoped would in a few years make 
us independent of Europe industrially, as the War of 1 8 1 2 had 
made us independent of Europe politically. Confident pride in 
the growing West had led Congress to vote such lavish dona- 
tions of public money for the construction of roads and canals 
that President Madison himself, who in his message invited the 
'' particular attention of Congress " to this subject, felt obliged 
to check its generosity by his veto. 

309. The Any manifestation of sectional spirit was condemned as nar- 
spirit rebuked TOW, niggardly, and unpatriotic. The arrival in Washington of 

the delegates of the Hartford Convention, to complain of the 
mismanagement of the war and demand the restitution of the 
commercial privileges of New England, just at the moment 
when the country was rejoicing over the victory of Jackson at 
New Orleans and the vindication of the independence of our 
ships and sailors, was an object lesson to political grumblers. 
These New England Federalists, if they had not meditated treason 
in their convention at Hartford in 18 14, had nevertheless gone 
to the verge of treason in refusing to send their militia to the 
northern frontier in 18 12 at Madison's command, in winking at 



The GrowtJi of a National Consciousness 231 

the forbidden but prosperous business of supplying the British 
armies in Canada with beef and grain, and in refusing to sub- 
scribe for 10 per cent of our national war loan, when they had 
almost 50 per cent of the money of the country in their banks. 
They w^ere now justly rebuked in the hour of the victory they 
had done so little to secure. Their party was wrecked ; section- 
alism was branded with a stigma, and for years the fall of the 
Federalists served as a text for exhortations to national unity. 

A few wrecks after his inauguration Monroe made an extended 310. Mon- 
tour through the New England States, New York, Pennsylvania, and the"" era 
and Maryland, for the ostensible purpose of inspecting the °* gj^°*^„ 
national defenses. The real object of the journey was quite 
as much to strengthen the growing Republicanism of New 
England. No better proof of the accomplishment of this latter 
object could be found than the view which the old Federalist 
press took of the journey. That same Columbian Centinel of 
Boston, w^hich on the day of the inauguration of the first Re- 
publican President, Thomas Jefferson, had published a bitter 
lament over the defeaWof the glorious Federalist administration 
(p. 204), now hailed the inauguration of Jefferson's bosom friend 
and political follower, James Monroe, as the promise of " an 
era of good feeling." The phrase took the popular fancy and 
pleased President Monroe, who spread it during his journey, 
and repeated it on the tour of the Southern states which he 
made in the autumn of the same year (18 17). It has remained 
ever since as the catchword to designate the period of Monroe's 
presidency, when the Republican party had no rival, and when 
the issues which were to split this apparently united party into 
Whigs and Democrats had not* yet taken definite enough form 
to lead to a division. 

We shall study some of those issues in the next chapter. 311. The 
Here we must dwell a little further on the signs of national ^^^^ \^ t'lie 
unity which characterized the decade following the War of 181 2. !^^°°?^^"j. 
Perhaps no act of Congress during that decade shows more 1816 
clearly how thoroughly the war had nationalized the Republican 



232 National versits Sectional Interests 

party than the establishment of a second National Bank in 18 16. 
When Alexander Hamilton, in 1791, got Congress to charter a 
banking corporation with a capital of $10,000,000 to handle 
the financial business of the government, hold all the public 
moneys on deposit, and negotiate the national loans, there was 
a great outcry against this alliance of the government with the 
money power of the country. The capitalists would get the 
President and Congress into their control, it was said, and by 
bribery or threat of commercial panic would force through 
legislation favorable to their own interests. The Republican 
party had maintained a steady opposition to the Bank during 
the twenty years of its existence, and had refused to recharter 
it when its term expired in 181 1. '' The state banks," they said, 
" are the pillars of the nation." 

But during the War of 1 8 1 2 the state banks had all failed. 
There was no confidence in" financial circles because there was 
no standard of currency. Notes of New York banks were at a 
discount in Boston, and notes of Baltimore banks at a discount 
in NeV York ; while the paper of the ^^ wildcat " banks of the 
West was practically worthless in the commercial centers of the 
Atlantic seaboard. The state banks, which had been " the pil- 
lars of the nation," had now become, said one senator, " the 
caterpillars of the nation." The same men who had denounced 
the National Bank in 181 1 and refused to renew its charter 
now pleaded in favor of it. The same Republican press which 
had assailed Hamilton in 1791 now reprinted his arguments in 
favor of the Bank. And the same party which had feared the 
sinister influence on politics of a bank with $10,000,000 capital 
in 1 8 1 1 five years later chartered a new National Bank with a 
capital stock of $35,000,000, of which the government was to 
hold $7,000,000. The effect of this was the instantaneous re- 
turn of confidence to the merchants and bankers of the country. 
The state banks were forced to keep their paper up to the 
standard set by the National Bank or retire from business. 
Secretary of the Treasury Dallas, who found the United States 



The Groivth of a National Consciousness 233 



Treasury empty in the autumn of 18 14, left a surplus of 
$20,000,000 to his successor, Crawford, three years later. 

Another important sign of the growing national consciousness 312. impor- 
was the strengthening of the national government by several of the^^^^^°°^ 
important decisions of the Supreme Court. John Marshall of supreme 

^ ^ -^ Court under 

Virginia, a moderate Federalist, who had served with distinction John Marshall 
as an officer in the Revolution, and had later been special envoy 
to France, member of Congress, and for a brief period Secretary 
of State, was appointed Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court 
by John Adams in the spring 
of 1 80 1. Marshall held this 
highest judicial office in the 
country for thirty-four years, 
and, by his famous decisions 
interpreting the Constitution, 
made for himself the greatest 
name in the history of the 
American bench. When the 
peace of 18 15 turned the at- 
tention of the country from 
foreign negotiations to the de- 
velopment of the national do- 
main, many questions arose as 
to the exact limits of the powers 
of the national government and 

of the various states. The people of the United States had given 
the national Congress certain powers enumerated in the Consti- 
tution, such as the power to lay taxes, to declare war, to raise and 
support armies, to regulate commerce, to coin money, and to 
make all laws which were " necessary and proper for carrying 
into execution " the powers granted. Marshall and his associates 
on the Supreme bench, in a number of important cases which 
came before them to test these powers, rendered verdicts in 
support of the national authority against that of the states. 




John Marshall 

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
1801-1835 



234 National versus Sectional Interests 

313. Martin For example, in 1816 the court of appeals of the state of 
LesseejTsi'e Virginia refused to allow a case to be taken from it to the Su- 
preme Court at Washington, on the ground that the state courts 
were independent of the national (federal) courts. But the 
Supreme Court upheld the Judiciary Act of 1789, which allowed 
every case involving the Constitution of the United States to 
come to. Washington on final appeal. 

314. McCui- Three years later the state of Maryland laid a tax on the 
Ma^iand, business of the branch of the National Bank established in that 
^^^9 state, claiming that the Constitution did not give Congress any 

right to establish a bank. Marshall wrote the decision of the 
Supreme Court in this case, justifying the right of Congress to 
establish a bank as a measure necessary and proper for carry- 
ing into execution the laws for raising a revenue and regulating 
the currency. The state was forbidden to tax the bank except 
for the ground and building it occupied. 

315. The In the same year, in the famous Dartmouth College case, 
couege case, the Supreme Court annulled a law of the legislature of New 
^^^^ Hampshire, which altered the charter of the college against the 

will of the trustees. The charter, the court held, was a con- 
tract between the legislature and the trustees ; and since the 
Constitution of the United States forbids any state to pass a 
law impairing the obligation of contracts (Art. I, sect. 10), the 
law of the New Hampshire legislature was null and void. 

316. Gibbons Again, five years later, the Supreme Court annulled a law of 
1824^ °' the state of New York; The legislature of New York had 

granted to Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton, the great 
steamboat promoters, a monopoly of steam navigation in all the 
waters belonging to the state, thus excluding from New York 
harbor the steam craft of New Jersey or New England. Marshall, 
invoking the clause of the national Constitution which gives 
Congress the right " to regulate commerce among the several 
states " (Art. I, sect. 8), argued that navigation forms an indis- 
pensable part of commerce, and hence no state could exclude 
the vessels of other states from its waters. 



The GrowtJi of a National Conscioti-sness 235 

These decisions, with several others of like character, show 
how the judicial branch of our government contributed to the 
national feeling which we have already seen dominating the 
legislative branch (Congress) in the passage of the army and 
navy bills, the Bank bill, and the tariff bill (18 16). 

Still further indications of a new national consciousness in the 317. changes 

decade which followed the war that " completed our independ- econo^c con- 

ence " may be seen in many facts of our social and economic ^itions, 

^ / _ 1816-1820 

life. The movement and mingling of population in immigration 

from Europe and emigration to the West was rapidly breaking 
down the social privileges and prejudices of sections of our 
country. In New England, for example, the old Puritan domin- 
ion was yielding to democratic tendencies in politics and religion. 
Connecticut in her constitution of 18 18 (the first new one since 
her colonial charter of 1662) did away with religious qualifica- 
tions for office. New Hampshire followed in 18 19, and the next 
year the Massachusetts convention for framing a constitution 
was torn with dissensions between the new Unitarians and the 
old Orthodox believers. The Episcopal Church in the Southern 
states also lost its predominance with the increase of Scotch-Irish 
Presbyterian immigrants and the growth of Methodism in the 
frontier communities. Distinctly popular movements looking 
toward the improvement of labor conditions, the establishment 
of public schools, the health and cleanliness of cities, began to 
be agitated in these years. Further westward emigration was 
encouraged by the reduction of the price of public lands from 
%2 to $1.25 an acre, and the sale of 80-acre lots instead of 
the customary sections of 160 acres. In spite of the caution 
of Madison and Monroe, Congress passed ten acts before 1820, 
appropriating in all over $1,500,000 for roads and canals. 

Finally, the beginnings of a truly national literature fell within 3 18. The be- 
these years. The North American Review, our first creditable' fn°American 
magazine, appeared in 18 15. Two years later William Cullen literature 
Bryant published his " Thanatopsis," and the next year appeared 
Washington Irving's " Sketch Book." James Fenimore Cooper 



236 Natiojial versus Sectional Interests 

began shortly afterward his famous series of novels dealing with 
Indian life. Hitherto the work of American writers, in all but 
political and religious subjects, had been but a feeble copy of 
the contemporary English models. In Bryant, Irving, and 
Cooper, America produced her first distinctively native talent, 
which drew its inspiration from the natural beauties, the historical 
traditions, and the novel life of the western world. 

319. The When the election of 1820 approached there was no rival 
reelection of candidate to Monroe in the field. The Federalist party, with 
Monroe, ^^ exception of a few irreconcilables and immovables, who, in 

the witty language of one of their number, reminded themselves 
of the " melancholy state of a man who has remained sober 
when all his companions have become intoxicated," had been 
entirely 'merged with the nationalized Republicans in the "era 
of good feeling." Monroe received the vote of every elector 
but one, who cast his ballot for John Quincy Adams for the 
purely sentimental reason that he did not wish to see any Presi- 
dent after George Washington elected by the unanimous voice 
of the American people. 

The Monroe Doctrine 

It was not alone in the development of our western domain 
and the reenforcement of the federal power by acts of Congress 
and decisions of the Supreme Court that the spirit of the new 
Americanism manifested itself in the decade following the treaty 
of Ghent. That generous glow of national enthusiasm cast its 
reflection over the whole Western Hemisphere. 

320. Our It must be borne in mind that the United States in 18 15 oc- 
neig ors in ^.^pj^j much less of the North American continent than it does 

to-day. Alaska, with its valuable furs and fisheries, belonged to 
the Russian Empire. Besides her present Dominion of Canada, 
. Great Britain claimed the Oregon country, a huge region lying 
between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, extending 
from the northern boundary of the present state of California 



The Growth of a National ConscioiiS7iess 237 

indefinitely toward the Alaskan shore. The possessions of Sp^n 
reached in an unbroken line from Cape Horn to a point four 
hundred miles north of San Francisco. They comprised not 
only all of South America (except Brazil and Guiana), Central 
America, Mexico, and the choicest islands of the West Indies, 
but also the immense region west of the Mississippi valley, 
which now includes California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, 
and Texas, with parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, and 
Oklahoma. Spain also owned what is now the state of Florida 
(then called East Florida), and claimed a strip of land (called 
West Florida) extending along the shore of the Gulf of Mexico 
from Florida to the mouth of the Mississippi. This gave her 
practical control of the whole shore of the Gulf. 

We disputed the claim of Spain to West Florida, however. 321. we dis- 
According to the interpretation of our State Department at piorida with 
Washington, this territory formed part of the original French ^p^^'^ 
tract of Louisiana (1682-1 763), and hence was included in the 
transfer from Spain to Napoleon in 1800, and in Napoleon's 
sale of Louisiana to the United States three years later. Spain, 
with better reason, maintained that the boundaries of the old 
French Louisiana had nothing to do with the transactions 
between Napoleon and the United States at the opening of the 
nineteenth century ; that she had received West Florida by the 
treaty of 1783, and that she had not parted with it since. 
. We wanted the Florida strip along the Gulf of Mexico for 322. we 
many reasons. It was the refuge of Indians, runaway slaves, wTstTTorida 
fugitives from justice, pirates, and robbers, who terrorized the October, 1810 
South and prevented the development of Georgia and the Mis- 
sissippi territory. It offered in the fine harbors of Mobile and 
Pensacola an outlet for the commerce of the new cotton region. 
Besides, the Gulf of Mexico was the " natural boundary " of 
the United States on the south. President Madison, therefore, 
in October, 18 10, ordered Governor Claiborne of the Orleans 
territory to take possession of West Florida as far as the Perdido 
River. Early the next year Congress by a secret act authorized 



238 



National versus Sectional Interests 



the President to occupy East Florida also. If the occupation of 
West Florida by the United States was of very doubtful legality, 
the attempted seizure of East Florida was downright robbery. 
Great Britain protested so strongly that Madison prudently dis- 
avowed the acts of his agents in the latter province and with- 
drew the American troops in 1813. 

But the Floridas continued to be a source of annoyance to 
the United States. They even furnished a base for England in 

East Florida, ^^ ^y^j. ^f 1812. Spain was too weak to maintain her authority 

1817-1818 ^ -^ 

there and miserably failed to redeem her pledge in the treaty of 



323. Jack- 
son's "con- 
quest " of 




GULF OF M. E X T G O 



Jackson in Florida 

1795, to prevent the Indians of Florida from attacking citizens 
of the United States. Finally, the Seminole Indians grew so 
dangerous that President Monroe ordered General Andrew 
Jackson, the " hero of New Orleans," to pursue them even into 
Spanish territory (December, 18 17). Jackson was a man who 
needed no second invitation for an Indian hunt. " Let it be 
signified to me through any channel," he wrote Monroe, " that 
the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United 
States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished." Jackson did 
not even wait for a reply to his letter. He swept across East 
Florida, reducing the Spanish strongholds of Gadsden, St. Marks, 



TJie GrowtJi of a National Consciousness 239 

and Pensacola, executed by court-martial two British subjects 
who were inciting the negroes and Indians to murder and 
pillage, and by the end of May, 18 18, was on his way back to 
Tennessee, leaving Florida a conquered province. 

Jackson's campaign brought the Florida question to a crisis. 324. secre- 
The administration at Washington was in a dilemma. If it u^Jfmatum\o 
indorsed his course, it would have to go further, and put the yf^^Je'r^^jg^g 
responsibility for war in Florida on the shoulders of Spain. On 
the other hand, if it should repudiate Jackson's course, it would 
strengthen the position of Spain in Florida and make it more 
difficult to acquire that desirable province. John C. Calhoun, 
the Secretary of War, was for censuring Jackson for exceeding 
his instructions ; but John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, 
persuaded the President to put on a bold front and make 
Jackson's campaign the basis for a final demand on Spain either 
to fulfill her promise to keep order in Florida or to turn the 
province over to the United States. " The President will neither 
inflict punishment nor pass a censure upon General Jackson," 
he wrote to Minister Erving at Madrid in November, 18 18. 
'' We shall hear no more apologies from Spanish governors and 
commandants of their inability to perform the solemn contracts 
of their country. . . . The duty of this government to protect 
the persons and property of our fellow citizens on the borders 
of the United States is imperative — it 7nust be discharged." 

But Spain was in no condition in 18 18 to perform her " sol- 325. Spain 
emn contracts." Ten years earlier Napoleon Bonaparte had s^outhAmer 
invaded her borders, overthrown her dynasty, and seated his ^*;gs^°J°^_ 
brother Joseph on the throne of Madrid. This upheaval in the 1825 
mother country had been the signal for the revolt of the Spanish 
colonies in South America, oppressed as they were by crushing 
taxes, commercial restrictions, and grasping governors. The res- 
toration of the absolute Spanish king after Napoleon's down- 
fall (18 1 4) had only increased the fires of revolt in the 
colonies. The great patriot generals, San Martin and Simon 
Bolivar, wrested province after province — Chile, Argentina, 



240 Natio7ial versus Sectional Interests 

Peru, Venezuela, New Granada (now Colombia) — from the 
Spanish crown, and established those South American repub- 
lics which for a century have maintained a troubled life of 
revolution and mutual warfare. 

Involved in all these difficulties, the Spanish court decided to 
abandon Florida to the United States. The treaty was signed 
at Washington, February 22, 18 19. The United States assumed 
ruary22, 1819 about $5,000,000 of claims of its citizens against Spain, for 
damages to our commerce in the Napoleonic wars, and in return 
received the whole of Florida. At the same time the western 
boundary of the Louisiana Purchase territory was fixed by a 
line running from the Sabine River in a stairlike formation 
north and west to the forty-second parallel of latitude, and 
thence west to the Pacific Ocean. ^ 

Meanwhile we were watching with great interest the progress 
of the revolution in the Spanish colonies of South America. As 
early as 181 1 President Madison had called the attention of 
Congress to " the scenes developing among the great commu- 
nities which occupy the southern portion of our hemisphere." 
During the years 1811-1817 the United States maintained 
" consuls," who were really government spies, at Buenos Aires, 
Caracas, and other centers of the revolt. Henry Clay, the 
Speaker and leader of the House, tried to force President Mon- 
roe into a hasty recognition of the South American republics. 
But the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, was more cau- 
tious. He had little confidence that the new republics would be 
able to maintain their independence, and he furthermore feared 
that interference by the United States in the affairs of the '' re- 
bellious colonies " of South America would offend the Spanish 
court and so endanger the success of the negotiations for the 
acquisition of Florida. 

1 The line ran from the mouth of the Sabine River north to the Red River ; 
thence west along the Red River to the one-hundredth meridian of west longi- 
tude ; thence north to the Arkansas River ; thence west along the Arkansas to its 
source ; thence north to the forty-second parallel of latitude ; thence due west to 
the Pacific Ocean (see map, opposite p. 210). 



The Growth of a National Consciousness 241 

However, in the year 182 1 there occurred four events which 328. our 

determined the administration to change its policy in regard to the^iouth^ ° 

the recos^nition of the South American republics. First, the final American 

° ^ ' republics, 

ratifications of the treaty of 18 19 were signed, and Florida was May, 182a 

ours ; secondly, the House, by a vote of 86 to 68, resolved to 
support the President as soon as he saw fit to recognize the 
independence of the South American states ; thirdly, the Czar 
of Russia issued a tikase (decree) forbidding the vessels of 
any other nation to approach within one hundred miles of 
the western coast of North America, above the fifty-first 
parallel of latitude, claimed by Russia as the southern boundary 
of her colony of Alaska ; and fourthly, the allied powers of 
Russia, Prussia, Austria, and France, having pledged themselves 
by the " Holy Alliance " to the restoration of the power and 
the possessions of all the '' legitimate thrones " which the 
Napoleonic wars had overthrown, began to listen to Spain's re- 
quest to subdue revolts in Madrid and restore the rebellious 
colonies in South America. On May 4, 1822, President Monroe 
took the first step in the protection of the South American 
republics, by recognizing their independence ; and Congress 
immediately made provision for the dispatch of ministers to 
their capitals. 

Neither Great Britain nor the United States could view with 329. Great 
indifference the intervention of the allied powers of Europe to yll^^^^^il 

reduce the South American republics to submission to Spain. J°^° ^° "^^^^' 

^ / ing the Holy 

These republics had naturally thrown off the commercial re- Alliance not 

strictions of Spain with her political authority. They had the new 

already, by 1822, built up a trade of $3,000,000 a year with republics 

Great Britain, and their market was too valuable a one to lose. 

Our own government was distressed by the rumors that France 

would take Mexico, and Russia would seize California, with 

perhaps Chile and Peru to boot, as a reward for their part in 

crushing the rebellious governments. Accordingly the English 

premier, George Canning, suggested to Richard Rush, our 

minister in London, that the United States join Great Britain 



242 National versus Sectional Interests 

in making a declaration to the allied powers to keep their hands 
off the new South American states. 

330. The Monroe was anxious to act on Canning's suggestion, and the 
acts aione^ ^^ two ex-Presidents, Madison and the aged Jefferson, replied to 

his request for advice by letters of hearty approval. Secretary 
Adams declared we ought not to follow England's lead, trailing 
" like a cockboat to a British man-of-war," but rather assume 
full and sole responsibility ourselves for the protection of the 
republics on the American continent. He therefore advised 
President Monroe to incorporate in his annual message to 
Congress of December 2, 1823, the famous statement of the 
policy of the United States toward the territory and govern- 
ment of the rest of the American continent, which has ever 
since been celebrated as the Monroe Doctrine. 

331. Anaiy- The message declared that the continents of the Western 
Monroe ' Hemisphere were " henceforth not to be considered as subjects 
Doctrine, £qj. fu^m-g colonization by any European powers," — this to pre- 
1823 vent the encroachments of Russia on the Pacific coast, and the 

designs of France on Mexico. Further, it announced the de- 
termination of the United States neither to meddle with the 
European systems of government nor to disturb the existing 
possessions of European powers in the New World. " But," it 
continued, '^ we owe it to candor and to the amicable relations 
existing between the United States and those powers to declare 
that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend 
their system [of the Holy Alliance] to any portion of this hemi- 
sphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." In other words, 
the South American republics, whose independence we had, 
" on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged," 
were no longer existing possessions of Spain ; and any at- 
tempt to impose upon them the absolutism of the Spanish court 
by the powers of continental Europe would be " viewed as the 
manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United 
States." From the acknowledgment of the South American 
republics, then, in 1822, the United States advanced in 1823 to 



The Groivth of a National Consciousness 243 

the defense of their territory and of their republican form of 
government against European interference. 

The Monroe Doctrine has been one of the most popular 332. inter- 
political principles in our history. It goes back for its basal idea the^Doctrin^e 
to George Washington's warning against '' entangling alliances i° i^^er 
with foreign nations," in his Farewell Address of 1796; and it history 
is upheld rigorously on the political platform and in the press 
whenever there is a question of settling a boundary or collect- 
ing a debt in the Spanish-American states. Our statesmen have 
gradually stretched the doctrine far beyond its original declara- 
tion of the protection of the territory and the government of 
the republics of Central and South America. It has even been 
invoked as a reason for annexing territory to the United States 
in order to prevent the seizure of the same territory by some 
European power. If the Monroe Doctrine maintains its popu- 
larity with future generations, it may possibly even result in the 
federation of the Latin states of Central and South America 
under the leadership of the great republic of the north. 

REFERENCES 

The Era of Good Feeling : J. B. MacMaster, Histoiy of the People of 
the United States, Vol. IV, chaps, xxxiii, xxxvi; Woodrow Wilson, 
History of the American Feople,Yo\. Ill, chap, iv; Henry Adams, His- 
tory of the United States in the Administrations of fefferson and Madison, 
Vol. IX; K. C. Babcock, The Rise of American Nationality (American 
Nation Series), chaps, xii-xv; J. W. Burgess, The Middle Period, 
c^hap. i; D. C. Oilman, y^w^j' Monroe (American Statesmen Series); 
W. W. WiLLOUGHBY, The Stipreine Court of the United States (Johns 
Hopkins University Studies, Baltimore, 1890). 

The Monroe Doctrine: MacMaster, Vol. V, chap, xli; Burgess, 
chaps, ii, v; Babcock, chap, xvii ; F. J. Turner, The Rise of the Nezv 
West (Am. Nation), chap, xii; F. L. Paxson, The Independence of the South 
American Republics; J. H. Latane, The Diplomatic Relations of the 
United States and Spanish America; W. C. YoY^v>,fohn Quincy Adams ; 
his Connection with the Monroe Doctrine [American Historical Review, 
Vol. VII, pp. 676-696; Vol. VIII, pp. 28-52); W. F. Reddaway, The 
Monroe Doctrine, 



244, National versus Sectional Intei^ests 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Development of Canals and Roads: Katherine Coman, In- 
dustrial Hisiojy of the United States, pp. 202-211 ; Turner, pp. 67-95, 
224-235; Babcock, pp. 243-258; MacMaster, Vol. IV, pp. 381-429; 
E. E. Sparks, The Expansio7t of the American People, pp. 264-269 ; R. 
T. Stevenson, The Growth of the Nation, i8og-i8j7, pp. 145-174. 

2. John Marshall and the Supreme Court : A. B. Hart, The Formation 
of the Union, pp. 234-236; II. C. Lodge, Daniel IVedster {American 
Statesmen Series), chap, iii ; A. B. Magruder, fohn Marshall (Am. 
Statesmen), chap, x; Babcock, pp. 290-308; C. A. Beard, Readings 
in American Government a?td Politics, Nos. 27, 112-114, 118. 

3. The Holy Alliance : A. B. Hart, American History told by Contem- 
poraries, Vol. Ill, No. 142; Burgess, pp. 123-126; MacMaster, Vol. 
V, pp. 30-41 ; C. A. Fyffe, History of Modern Ejirope, Vol. II, chap, i ; 
M. E. G. Duff, Studies in European Politics, chap. ii. 

4. Modern Interpretations of the Monroe Doctrine : J. B. Moore, Ameri- 
can Diplomacy, pp. 152-167 ; also in Harper'' s Magazine, Vol. CIX, pp. 
857 ff.; A. B. Hart, Foundations of American Foreign Policy, pp. 211- 
240 ; A. C. COOLIDGE, The United States as a World Power, pp. 95-110 ; 
J. H. Latane, America as a World Power (American Nation Series), 
pp. 255-268. 

5. American Literature a Century Ago : MacMaster, Vol. V, pp. 
268-306; Adams, Vol. IX, pp. 198-214; W. E. Simonds, Student His- 
to?y of American Literature, pp. 94-146. 



CHAPTER IX 

SECTIONAL INTERESTS 

Facing Westward 

Although many thousand pioneers had crossed the Alleghe- 333. nin- 
nies to the rich valleys of the Ohio and the Tennessee before western de- 
the War of 1812, the supply of . both men and capital was too ^efo^ft^e 
meager to develop the resources of the whole eastern basin of the war of 1812 
Mississippi. The Indians, instigated by England on the north 
and by Spain on the south, were a constant source of danger. 
Lack of roads was so serious a handicap that it was not profita- 
ble to raise wheat far from the banks of navigable rivers. The 
barrier of the Alleghenies made transportation between the 
Ohio valley and the seaboard so expensive that the wagon 
driver got the lion's share both of the money for which the 
Western farmer sold his wheat in Virginia and of the money 
which he paid for his plow in Ohio. If the pioneer floated his 
cargo of wheat, pork, or tobacco down the Mississippi to New 
Orleans in a flatboat, it was more profitable to sell boat and all 
there and return home on horseback than to spend three 
months battling his way up against the current. 

But during the decade 18 10-1820 these difficulties in the 334. Their 

r 1 1 ■, r 1 xtr • ^^ 1 femoval in 

way of the development of the West were rapidly removed, the decade 

William Henry Harrison by his victories over Tecumseh's ^^lo-iSao 

braves at Tippecanoe Creek in Indiana territory (1811), and 

Andrew Jackson by his pacification of the Creeks and Seminoles 

in Florida (18 13-18 18), put an end to the danger from the 

Indians on our frontiers. In 1 8 1 1 the steamboat (which many 

years of experiment by Fitch and Fulton, on the Delaware, the 

Seine, and the Hudson, had brought to efficiency) made its first 

245 



246 



ATatiojial ve7'sus Sectional Interests 



335. Re- 
newed west- 
ward emigra- 
tion 



appearance on the Ohio River. Henceforth the journey from 
Louisville to New Orleans and back could be made inside of a 
month, and the products of the Gulf region could be brought to 
the Northwest by the return voyage. 

The interruption of our foreign commerce by embargo, non- 
intercourse, and war had sent thousands of families westward 
across the mountains, where better farm land could be bought 
from the government at two dollars an acre, with liberal credit, 
than could be had for ten times that price in cash on the 




Canal Boats crossing the Mountains 

seaboard. Moreover, a stream of immigrants of the hardy 
northern stocks of Europe began to pour into our country 
after the War of 18 12, to swell the westward march to the 
farm lands of the Ohio valley. In the single year 181 7, 
22,000 Irish and Germans came over. A ceaseless procession 
passed along the Mohawk valley and over the mountain roads 
of Pennsylvania and Virginia. " The old America seems to be 
breaking up and moving westward," wrote an Englishman who 
migrated to Illinois in 18 17. A gatekeeper on a Pennsylvania 
turnpike counted over 500 wagons with 3000 emigrants passing 
in a single month. 



Sectional Interests 



247 



At the same time the cotton planters of the South were mov- 336. Exten- 
ing from the Carolinas and Georgia into the fertile Mississippi cotton* fields 
territory which the campaigns of Andrew Jackson had freed to the Missis- 
from the terror of the savage. The invention of machinery in 
England for the spinning and weaving of cotton had increased 
the demand for that article beyond the power of the planters 
to satisfy, even with the hundredfold increase of production 
effected by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. How 
eagerly the planters turned to the virgin soil along the Gulf 








Picking and loading Cotton 



of Mexico may be seen from the following figures. In 18 10 
less than 5,000,000 pounds of cotton were grown west of the 
Alleghenies, out of a total crop of 80,000,000 pounds; ten 
years later the new Western states (Louisiana, Mississippi, Ala- 
bama) produced 60,000,000 pounds out of a total crop of 
175,000,000 pounds ; and five years later still, these same states 
raised over 160,000,000 pounds, or about one half the entire 
crop of the country. 

With the attractions of cheap and fertile farm lands in the 337. Rapid 
Northwest' and virgin cotton soil in the Southwest, the trans- fh^ew west 
Allegheny country far outstripped the seaboard states in growth 



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248 



Sectional Interests 249 

of population. While the census of 1820 showed an increase of 
only 35 per cent in the New England States, and 92 per cent 
in the Middle Atlantic States, over the population at the begin- 
ning of the nineteenth century, the western commonwealths of 
Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee increased 320 per cent in the 
same period. Six new Western states were added to the Union 
in the decade following the outbreak of the second war with 
England: Louisiana (18 12), Indiana (18 16), Mississippi (181 7), 
Illinois (18 18), Alabama (1819), Missouri (182 1), — more than 
had been admitted since the formation of our government, and 
more than were to be admitted until the eve of the Civil War. 
The new West was rapidly coming to be a power to be reckoned 
with in national politics. By the apportionment of 1820, 47 of 
the 213 congressmen and 18 of the 48 senators came from 
beyond the Alleghenies, — the land which a generation before 
was, in the language of Daniel Webster, '^ a fresh, untouched, 
unbounded, magnificent wilderness." 

The settlers of the new West had abundant courage but little 338. it calls 
capital. In order to connect their rapidly developing region a^dforTts^ 
with the Atlantic coast, that they might exchange their farm development 
products for the manufactures of the eastern factories and the 
imports from the Old World, great outlays of money for roads 
and canals were needed. The national government was asked 
to contribute to these improvements, which meant not the 
building up of one section of the country only, but the general 
diffusion of prosperity, the strengthening of a national senti- 
ment, and the promise of a united people to resist foreign 
attack or domestic treachery. President Madison in his last 
annual message to Congress (December, 18 16) urged that body 
to turn its particular attention to " effectuating a system of 
roads and canals such as would have the effect of drawing 
more closely together every part of our country." 

A few days later John C. Calhoun, an enthusiastic " expan- 339. cai- 
sionist " member from South Carolina, pushed a bill through g°JJ° 1^816*^°"^ 
Congress devoting to internal improvements the $1,500,000 



250 



Xatiofial versus St'c'tiofial Literests 



which the government was to receive as a bonus for the estab- 
lishment of the second National Bank, as well as all the divi- 
dends accruing to the government on its stock in the bank. 
Calhoun urged the need of good roads for transportation of 
our army and the movement of our commerce. '' We are great, 
and rapidly (I was about to say, fearfully) growing,*' he cried ; 
'' the extent of our countr}- exposes us to the gi^eatest of all 
calamities next to the loss of liberty, disufiion. . . . Let us 




340. Failure 
of the na- 
tional policy, 
about 1825 



View of Cincinnati in 1825 

bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and 
canals. . . . Let us conquer space." 

Calhoun's Bonus Bill was vetoed by President Madison on 
his last day of office (March 3, 18 17). Not that Madison was 
opposed to spending the nation's money for improving the 
means of communication with the W^est (as his message of 
the previous December shows), but because he thought that the 
Constitution needed amending in order to give Congress this 
power. Madison's successor, Monroe (1817-1825), was also of 
the old generation of Virginia statesmen who had done so much 



Sectional hi te rests 251 

of the work of framing our Constitution, and he too cautiously 
advocated an amendment empowering Congress to make the 
desired improvements. By the time a man of the new genera- 
tion, and a champion of^ the " nationalized " Republican party, 
came to the presidential chair, in the person of John Quincy 
Adams (1825), the favorable moment for the public encourage- 
ment of the development of the West was past. In vain did 
Adams seek to rouse Congress to the policy which Clay and 
Calhoun had advocated so heartily a decade before. The 
manufacturing North, the cotton-raising South, and the farm- 
ing and wool-growing West had discovered that their interests 
were mutually antagonistic ; and each section was striving (as 
we shall see in the following pages) to secure legislation by 
Congress to safeguard its own interests. The " era of good 
feeling " was changing into an epoch of bitter sectional strife. J 

// 

The Favorite Sons 

If we contrast the decade which preceded the announcement 341. con- 
of the Monroe Doctrine with the decade which followed it, this decades 
remarkable fact stands out, that every single act and policy of ^g""^!" ^°^ 
the earlier period in support of nationalism — the increase of the 
army and navy, the recharter of the Bank, the sale of public 
lands on liberal terms, the expenditure of money from the public 
treasury for internal improvements, the increased authority of 
the Supreme Court, the high tariff, and even the Monroe Doc- 
trine itself — became the subject of violent sectional contro- 
versies in the later period. 

The rivalry of the sections first showed itself in the fight for 342. The 
the presidency in 1824. It was not a contest of parties ; for since ofThTEaTt"^ 

the fall of the Federalists in 18 16 the nationalized Republican south, and 

^ West 

party had stood without a rival in the field. Monroe's reelection 

in 1820 was practically unanimous. But in 1824 there was no 

single candidate acceptable to Fast, West, and South. Instead, 

there was a group of remarkably able statesmen who, in spite 



252 



National verstis Sectional Interests 



343. John 

Quincy 

Adams, 

1 767-1848 



344. Daniel 

Webster, 

1782-1852 



of their own desire to cherish the broad national spirit of the 
second decade of the century, found themselves drawn year by 
year into the more exclusive service of their sections. 

New England was represented in this group by John Quincy 
Adams and Daniel Webster. The former was one of the best 
trained statesmen in all our history. He was the son of the 
distinguished patriot and Federalist President, John Adams. 
As a boy of eleven he had accompanied his father on a diplo- 
matic mission to Paris (1778), and during the next forty years 

had served his country in the 
capacity of secretary, minister, 
or special envoy at the courts 
of Russia, Prussia, the Nether- 
lands, Sweden, France, and 
England. He had served as 
United States senator from 
Massachusetts for ten years, 
when President Monroe called 
him, in 181 7, to the first place 
in his cabinet, a position which 
he filled with great success 
during the eight years of 
Monroe's administration. For 
all his cosmopolitan experi- 
ence, Adams remained a New England Puritan, and preserved 
to the end of his career the noble austerities and repelling virtues 
of the Puritan, — unswerving conscientiousness, unsparing self- 
judgment, unflagging industry, unbending dignity, unyielding 
devotion to duty. He rose before daylight, read his Bible with 
the regularity of an orthodox clergyman, and in his closely 
written diary of a dozen volumes recorded the affairs of his soul 
as faithfully as the affairs of state. 

Daniel Webster, fifteen years Adams's junior, had by no 
means reached the latter's level as a statesman at the close of 
Monroe's administration. He had neither been a member of the 




(2s. 

John Quincy Adams 



Sectional Interests 253 

cabinet nor filled a diplomatic post. The son of a sturdy New- 
Hampshire farmer, he had secured a college education at Dart- 
mouth, at some sacrifice to his family, and had amply justified 
their faith in his promise by a brilliant legal career. In 18 13 
he had been sent to Washington as congressman from a New- 
Hampshire district. A few years later he moved his law office 
to Boston, and from 1823 to the middle of the century con- 
tinued almost uninterruptedly to represent the people of Mas- 
sachusetts in the national House and Senate. By his famous 
plea in the Dartmouth College case, his Plymouth oration on 
the two-hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims 
(1820), and his speeches in Congress, he had already won a 
national reputation as an orator before the close of Monroe's 
administration. When it was known that Webster was to speak, 
the gallery and floor of the Senate chamber would be crowded 
with a throng eager to sit or stand for hours under the spell of 
his sonorous and majestic voice. Like Adams, Webster inher- 
ited and appreciated New England's traditions of learning, and 
took just pride in the contribution of its Puritan stock to the 
mental and moral standards of our country ; but he was not a 
Puritan in temper and habits, like Adams, who wrote himself 
down in his diary as " a man of cold, austere, and forbidding 
manners." When Webster erred it w^as rather on the side of 
conviviality than of austerity. 

The Middle Atlantic region had two or three statesmen of 345. Albert 
first rank, besides scores of ^jbliticians who were contending ^^l^^^^ 
for political influence. Albert Gallatin of Pennsylvania, a Swiss 
by birth, had been Secretary of the Treasury under Jefferson 
and Madison (1801-1813), had been with Adams and Clay on 
the commission which negotiated the peace with England in 
18 1 4, and was serving as minister to France when he was per- 
suaded to come home to take part in the campaign of 1824. 

Rufus King, senator from New York, had, in his younger 346. Rufus 
days, been one of the Massachusetts delegates to the Constitu- J^^"^' ^^^^" 
tional Convention of 17S7. Three times since 1800 he had 



254 National versus Sectional Interests 

been candidate for President or Vice President on the Federalist 
ticket. At the time of Monroe's presidency he was one of the 
most eloquent antislavery orators in Congress. 

De Witt Clinton had been governor of New York for two 
terms, and in 1812, as candidate of the Federalist party, he 
had seriously contested Madison's reelection. His monument 
is the great Erie Canal (opened in 1825), which runs through 
the Mohawk valley and, connecting with the,:Hudson, unites the 
waters of the Great Lakes with those of the Atlantic Ocean. 
But none of these men was an " available " candidate in 1824. 
Gallatin was a nationalized foreigner, King had been standard 
bearer of the Federalists in their humiliating defeat of 18 16, 
and Clinton, besides the handicap of his old Federalist connec- 
tions, was too much engrossed in the strife of factions in New 
York state to emerge as a national figure. 

Among the brilliant group of orators and statesmen from the 
South, William H. Crawford of Georgia and John C. Calhoun 
of South Carolina stood preeminent. Crawford had a powerful 
mind in a powerful body. He entered the United States Sen- 
ate in 1807, at the age of thirty-five, was made minister to 
France in 18 13, and was in the cabinet continuously as Secre- 
tary of War and of the Treasury from i8i5toi825. A most 
accomplished politician, he came very near defeating Monroe for 
the Republican nomination for the presidency in 18 16, despite 
the latter's hearty support by Madison. Crawford was retained 
by Monroe as the head of the Treasury Department, where 
he won from so high an authority as Gallatin the praise of 
having " a most correct judgment and inflexible integrity." 

John C. Calhoun probably has even to-day but one rival in 
the hearts of Southern patriots, — the gallant warrior-gentleman, 
Robert E. Lee. Calhoun, just past thirty, was one of the bril- 
liant group of "new men" in the Twelfth Congress, who in 
their national enthusiasm forced Madison to declare war on Eng- 
land in 18 1 2, and followed the successful conclusion of the war 
with the liberal legislation on army, bank, tariff, and internal 




John C. Calhoun 



255 



256 National versiLS Sectional Interests 

improvements which we have studied in the preceding chapter. 
Monroe offered Calhoun the War portfolio in 18 17, and, like 
Adams and Crawford, the South Carolinian remained in the 
cabinet during both of Monroe's terms. Some of Calhoun's 
contemporaries feared that " the lightning glances of his mind " 
and his passion for national expansion sometimes disturbed his 
solid judgment in these early years ; but Adams, who sat for 
eight years at the same council board with him, described 
Calhoun in his diary as " fair and candid, of clear and quick 
understanding, cool self-possession, enlarged philosophical views, 
and ardent patriotism." 

The West boasted of three men of national reputation in 
Benton, Clay, and Jackson, all of whom had emigrated from 
the South Atlantic States. Thomas Hart Benton, born in North 
Carolina in 1782, had gone west in early life to help build up 
the commonwealth of Tennessee ; and, following the impulse 
of the pioneer, had continued farther to the trans-Mississippi 
frontier. In 182 1 he was sent by the new state of Missouri to 
the Senate, where he continued for thirty years to plead the 
cause of westward expansion with an almost savage enthusi- 
asm. He denounced the " surrender of Texas " ^ to Spain in 
the treaty of 18 19 with all the zeal of an ancient prophet, and 
foretold the day when the valley of the Columbia River should 
be the granary of China and Japan. 

The name of Henry Clay has already appeared frequently 
on these pages, for no account of the War of 1 8 1 2 and the sys- 
tem of national development which followed could be written 
without giving Clay the most conspicuous place. He was a 
born leader of men, adapting his genial personality to the 
humblest and roughest frontiersman without a sign of conde- 
scension, and meeting the lofty demeanor of an Adams with 
an easy charm of manner. When still a young law student of 

1 When the boundary treaty of 1819 was concluded (see p. 240) some of our 
statesmen claimed, but without right, that Texas, being a part of the Louisiana 
Purchase territory, was " sacrificed " or " surrendered " to Spain. 




HENRY CLAY 
Courtesy of the Long Island Historical Society 



Sectional Interests 257 

nineteen Clay had migrated from Virginia, in 1796, to the new 
state of Kentucky, where his great gifts of leadership and mar- 
velous oratory obtained for him a seat in the United States 
Senate before the legal age of thirty years. In 181 1 he entered 
the House, and as Speaker of the Twelfth Congress began a 
career of leadership in American politics which was to extend 
over four decades to his death in 1 85 2. If Webster's voice was 
the most convincing that ever sounded in the halls of Congress, 
Henry Clay's was the most winning. He spoke to the hearts 
of men. He was not merely the " choice " of his supporters ; 
he was their idol. And when he was defeated for the high office 
of President, it is said men wept like children. 

Finally, in Andrew Jackson of Tennessee the Southwest had 352. Andrew 
a hero of the Simon-pure American democracy. Jackson was lygy.is^s 
born of Scotch-Irish parentage in the western uplands on the 
border of the Carolinas in 1767. He joined the tide of emi- 
gration to Tennessee, where his energy, pluck, and hard sense 
gained for him a foremost place in local politics, while his 
prowess as an Indian fighter won him a generalship in the 
War of 18 1 2. The victory of New Orleans (18 15) made 
Jackson the most conspicuous soldier of the republic, and the 
" conquest of Florida " in the Seminole War, three years later, 
brought him before the cabinet at Washington and the court of 
Madrid as the decisive factor in the long negotiations over the 
Florida territory. Jackson was a man of action, not words. 
His bitter rival, Henry Clay, never tired of Calling him a mere 
" military chieftain." Away back in Washington's administra- 
tion Jackson had entered Congress from the new state of 
Tennessee (1796) in his backwoodsman's dress, ''a tall, lank, 
uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging 
over his face, and a cue down his back tied in an eelskin." 
Jefferson, who was president of the Senate when Jackson was 
a member of that body, in 1 797-1 798, said that he had often 
seen this violent member from Tennessee struggling in vain to 
speak on the floor, his voice completely choked by rage. But 



258 National versus Sectional Interests 

Jackson left the halls of Congress in 1798, not to return for a 
full quarter of a century, — and then crowned with the laurels 
of his great victories and already the choice of the legislature 
of his state for President. 

Four of these " favorite sons " of the various sections of 
the country were rivals for the presidency in 1824, — General 
forthepresi- j^ckson, Henry Clay, and Monroe's cabinet officers Adams 
and Crawford. During the whole of Monroe's second term 
these men were laying their plans to gain the coveted honor. 
In those days the great national nominating conventions which 
now meet in the early summer of each presidential year, to 
select the standard bearers of the party, were unknown. The 
custom since John Adams's day had been for the members of 
each party in Congress to assemble in a caucus (or conference) 
^ and pick out their candidates for President and Vice President. 

But the increasing democratic sentiment of the country, influ- 
enced largely by the rise of the new West, had made this ex- 
clusive method of choosing presidential candidates unpopular. 
The people at large felt that they should have a voice in the 
selection as well as in the election of a President. Therefore, 
although Crawford secured the support of the congressional 
caucus, the candidates of the other sections were enthusiasti- 
cally nominated by state legislatures and mass meetings. 

354. No pop- It was the first popular presidential campais^n in our history, 

ular choice , ... \. . , , , 

for President aboundmg m personalities, cartoons, emblems, banners, songs, 

speeches, and dinners. " Old Hickory " clubs were formed for 
Jackson, and men wore black silk vests with his portrait stamped 
upon them. The support of the New England States was 
pledged to Adams; Tennessee, Alabama, and Pennsylvania 
declared for Jackson; and Clay secured the legislatures of 
Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Louisiana. In New York there 
was a batde royal, resulting in the distribution of the 36 elec- 
toral votes of the state among the four candidates. When the 
vote was formally counted it was found that Jackson had 99 
votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. 



Sectional Interests 259 

As no candidate had received the majority (more than half) 355. Adams 
of the electoral votes required by the Constitution for the choice House^ ^^ *^^ 
of a President, the House of Representatives had to select from 
the three highest names on the list (T\^elfth Amendment). Clay, 
being out of the race, decided quite naturally to throw his influ- 
ence on the side of Adams, who was not, like Jackson, his rival in 
the West, and whose political views were much closer to his own 
on such questions as internal improvements, the tariff, the Bank, 
and other points of the " American System," than were those 
of the " military chieftain " Jackson. Adams was chosen by the 
House, and immediately offered Clay the first place in his cabinet. 

The Jackson supporters were furious. The '^ will of the peo- 356. jackson 
pie " had been defeated, they said. The House was morally I? foir^ears' 
bound, they claimed, to choose the man who had the greatest campaign" 
number of electoral and popular votes. They declared that the 
aristocratic Adams and Henry Clay, " the Judas of the West," 
had entered into a " corrupt bargain " to keep the old hero of 
New Orleans out of the honors which the nation had clearly 
voted him. Jackson appealed from Congress to the people. 
He resigned his seat in the Senate, and with an able corps of 
managers in every section of the country began a four years' 
campaign against Adams, Clay, and the whole " dynasty of sec- 
retaries," to restore the government of the American republic to 
the ideals of its founders and to servants of the people's choice. 



An Era of Hard Feelings 

" Less possessed of your confidence than any of my prede- 357. Thedif- 
cessors, I am deeply conscious that I shall stand more and of^^resident" 
oftener in need of your indulgence." So wrote John Quincy Adams 
Adams in his first annual message to Congress, in December, 
1825. But in spite of this gracious invitation to Congress to 
meet him halfway in the harmonious conduct of the govern- 
ment, Adams was destined to a term of bitter strife and cha- 
grin. The charge that he had won the presidency by means of 



26o National versus Sectional Intei^ests 

a '' corrupt bargain " with Henry Clay was repeated by Jackson, 
and used by shrewd Jackson managers in every state to culti- 
vate opposition to the administration. More than a third of the 
senators voted against the confirmation of Clay as Secretary 
of State ; and John C. Calhoun (who had been overwhelm- 
ingly elected Vice President), in his capacity of president of the 
Senate, appointed committees hostile to Adams's policy, and 
refused to call to order members who raved against the Presi- 
dent in almost scurrilous language. The administration party 
elected its Speaker of the House by a margin of only five votes. 
The reason why one of the most upright and patriotic of 
our Presidents found himself antagonized and thwarted at every 
turn in his administration was simply this : Adams attempted 
to preserve the broad national idea at a time when the sections 
were growing keenly conscious of their conflicting interests. 
With our present rapid means of transportation and communi- 
cation by the railroad, the telegraph, and the telephone ; with 
our tremendous interstate commerce binding section to section ; 
with our network of banks and brokerage houses maintaining 
financial equilibrium between the different parts of our country, 
we find it hard to realize the isolation and the consequent an- 
tagonism of the various geographical sections in the early and 
middle years of the nineteenth century. The wonder really is 
that our country held together as well as it did, and not that it 
tended to separate into sections. For in spite of the temporary 
unifying effect of the second war with Great Britain, it was not 
until the crisis of the great Civil War that the United States 
became an assured Union. 
359. The in- We shall better appreciate the United States of 1825 if we 
New England think of it as a huge geographical framework containing several 
distinct communities with widely differing social and industrial 
interests. New England, with its two full centuries of Puritan 
history behind it, though at last outgrowing its religious bigotry, 
was still a very conservative region socially and politically. It 
had been the last stronghold of Federalism, which stood, in 



Sectional Interests 261 

John Adams's phrase, for government by " the rich, the well- 
born, and the able." It had never made the ballot common or 
office cheap. As its farming population was attracted westward 
to the rich lands of the Ohio valley,^ power was even more con- 
solidated in the hands of the rich merchant and manufacturing 
classes on the seaboard. New York, New Jersey, and eastern 
Pennsylvania, without sharing the religious prejudices of New 
England, were generally allied with that region in their industrial 
and mercantile interests. 

To New England's aristocracy of merchants the South opposed 360. The 
an aristocracy of planters. The cultivation of cotton, increasing aristocracy " 
as we have seen at a marvelous rate in the early years of the ^° *^^ South 
nineteenth century, was rapidly fixing on the South an institu- 
tion which was fraught with the gravest consequences for our 
country's history, — the institution of negro slavery. We shall 
discuss the political and ethical consequences of slavery in later 
chapters. Here we note simply the economic fact that the in- 
crease of negro slave labor in the South made free white labor 
impracticable, and with it shut out the possibility of the develop- 
ment of manufactures, which, since the second war with Eng- 
land, had been thriving in the Northern states. 

A third distinct section of our country, growing every year 361. The 
more conscious of its peculiar temper and its peculiar needs, was JJunity of?he 
the West. To the merchant aristocracy of the East and the ^^^^ 
planter aristocracy of the South, the West opposed the rugged 
democracy of a pioneer community. Men were scarce in Ohio, 
Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Mississippi territory in 
the early days, and every man counted. The artificial distinc- 
tions of name and education weighed but little compared with 
the natural distinctions of brawn and wit. The pioneer was 
rough and elemental, hardy and self-reliant. He made his way 
with knife and gun. He usually drank hard and talked loudly. 

1 The influence of New England on the West may be seen in the fact that in 
1830 thirty-one members of Congress were natives of Connecticut, though the 
state itself sent but five members. 



262 Natio7ial versus Sectional Interests 

A convention at Knoxville for framing the constitution of Ten- 
nessee adopted the rule that any man who digressed from the 
discussion " in order to fall upon the person of another mem- 
ber " should be suppressed by the chair. Justice was summary. 
The feud and the duel often replaced the tedious processes of 
the courts. The test of a man was what he could do^ not how 
much he knew. If he could manage a wild horse, drive an ax 
deep, and repel an Indian raid, he was the right kind of Ameri- 
can ; and his vote and opinion were worth - as much in this 
democratic country as those of any merchant in Boston. 

The people of the Atlantic seaboard had all inherited Euro- 
pean ideas of rank. They had, to be sure, developed a political 
democracy, but not a social one. They believed in a govern- 
ment y^r the people and perhaps of \ki^ people — but not by the 
people. In Washington's day only some 120,000 out of a popu- 
lation of nearly 4,000,000 had the right to vote, and religious 
or property qualifications were attached to the offices of gov- 
ernment in almost all the states. But the new states of the 
West were all for manhood suffrage, without regard to birth, 
profession, or wealth. The time had now come when these 
states, with their immense growth in population, were conscious 
of their influence over the national government. By 1825 the 
states west of the Alleghenies sent 47 members to a House of 
213, and elected 18 out of 48 United States senators. "It is 
time," cried Benton in one of his powerful pleas for the inter- 
ests of the Mississippi Valley, " that Western men had some 
share in the destinies of this republic." 
363. The in- The events of the period which we are studying can be 
flict between understood only in the light of this sectional rivalry. The up- 
secti(mai^°^ right Adams was subjected to petty opposition all through his 
interests term because he was unable to see or unwilling to encourage 
such rivalry. While his opponents were busy building up their 
party machine, Adams steadily refused to use his high position 
for such a purpose. He would not remove a man from office 
for voting against the administration ; he would not appoint a 



Sectional Interests 263 

man to office as a reward for services to the party. He declined 
to exchange the responsibilities of the statesman for the in- 
trigues of the politician. He held to the policy of a strong 
national government controlling the interests of all parts of the 
country, just at the moment when these various parts were 
becoming convinced that in order to secure their interests they 
must take the direction of affairs into their own hands, or at 
least have some effective check on the central government. 

The affair of the Panama Congress is an excellent illustration 304. The 
of the frustration of the national ideas of Adams and Clay by g^e^ssTsST' 

a sectional interest. The newly liberated republics of Mexico, reveals sec- 

•' ^ tional jeal- 

Colombia, and Central America, whose independence the United ousy 

States had guaranteed in the Monroe Doctrine, decided to hold 
a congress on the Isthmus of Panama for the purpose of 
forming a league to oppose the aggressions of Spain or any 
other European nation. A courteous invitation was sent to the 
United States in the autumn of 1825 to participate in this con- 
gress, and Adams and Clay, both ardent nationalists and expan- 
sionists, were in favor of accepting. But the slaveholding states 
of the South saw in the congress a grave danger. The revolt 
of the Spanish colonies had been accompanied by a movement 
in favor of slave emancipation. If Cuba and Porto Rico were 
added to the new group of republics, it would mean the libera- 
tion of the slaves of those islands. If Haiti, already a free negro 
republic, were admitted to the congress, it would sanction the 
liberation of the slave, and we should be logically forced to 
welcome the ministers of the negro republic to our country. 

The Southern orators in Congress were grimly determined 365. Fear of 
that no such thing should happen. " The peace of eleven states fng^fn°the"^' 
of this Union," said one, " will not permit black consuls and south 
ambassadors to establish themselves in our cities and parade 
through our country, and give their fellow blacks in the United 
States proof in hand of the honors which await them for a 
like successful insurrection on their part." After a long and 
bitter debate the names of the two envoys whom Adams had 



264 



National ve7'S2ts Sectional Interests 



appointed to represent us at the Panama Congress were con- 
firmed in the Senate by the close vote of 24 to 19. But it was 
a fruitless victory for Adams and Clay. One of the envoys died 
on the way to Panama, and the- other reached his destination 
only to find the congress adjourned. 

The Adams-Clay policy in regard to internal improvements 
at national expense met the same sectional opposition. The 
President praised the spirit of New York state in complet- 
ing the Erie Canal (1825), and tried to stimulate Congress by 
this example to the " accomplishment of works important to 

the whole country, to 
which neither the au- 
thority nor the resources 
of any one state could 
be adequate." But the 
tide of opinion was run- 
ning strongly against 
him. The West replied, 
Let the government give 
us the lands which are 
now being bought up by 
Eastern speculators, and 
we will take care of our 




The Cession of Indian Lands in Georgia 



own development. And the South said, Let the government re- 
duce the tariff duties which are enriching the Northern merchants 
at our expense, and it will not have so much money to spend 
" in charity " on roads and canals. 

Even a single state defied the national policy of the adminis- 
tration. Georgia had for several years been hindered in its de- 
velopment by the presence of the large and powerful nations 
of Creek and Cherokee Indians on its fertile soil. The United 
States had promised to remove these Indians as early as 1802, 
but they were still there when Adams became President in 1825. 
Clay negotiated a treaty with the Indians, giving them the occu- 
pancy of the land till 1827. But Governor Troup of Georgia 



Sectional Interests 265 

had already begun to survey the lands as state property. Adams 

warned the governor against interfering with '' the faith of the 

nation" toward the Indians; but Troup replied that Georgia 

was ''.sovereign on her own soil," and warned the Secretary of 

War that he would '' resist by force the first act of hostility on 

the part of the United States, the unblushing ally of the savages." 

The national government had been petitioned, reprimanded, and 

denounced before. There had been threats on the part of the 

states to nullify its laws and even to secede from its jurisdiction. 

But never till now had a state dared to defy the government 

at Washington as a '' public enemy." To Adams's chagrin the 

Senate refused to support him in forcing Georgia to obedience, 

and Governor Troup proceeded with his surveys. 

These examples of the Panama fiasco, the failure of the 368. The 

policy of internal improvements, and the successful defiance of party^sep-^ 

the orovernment by the state of Georgia show how rapidly sec- urates into . 
• , • , . , . 1 , . . , two wings 

tional mterests were replacmg the national enthusiasm of the 

two previous administrations. There was as yet no new party 
formed, but the two wings of the Republican party drew so far 
apart that new^ names became necessary to denote them. The 
supporters of the policy of Adams and Clay were called Na- 
tional-Republicans ; and the opposition forces, led by Jackson, 
Calhoun, and Crawford, revived the original party name of 
Democratic-Republicans. In the next chapter we shall see how 
these two factions of the Republican party developed into the 
two new parties of Whigs and Democrats, — the former still sup- 
porting the national ideas of Adams, Clay, and Webster; the 
latter inclining more and more to the theory of " states rights " 
and the strict limitation of the national government to the pow- 
ers specified in the Constitution. 

The failure of the National-Republican policy of government 369. Signifi- 
aid for improvements in transportation is seer^n its true signifi- faiJure^of^the 

cance when we remember that it was iust at this epoch that the national 

•" '■ policy 

great railway systems of our country were begun. The Mo- 
hawk and Hudson Railway (parent of the New York Central) 



266 National versus Sectional Interests 

was started in 1825, the Boston and Albany and the Pennsyl- 
vania in 1827, and the Baltimore and Ohio in 1828. These rail-, 
ways soon superseded the canals as routes of transportation, and 
have now grown into several vast systems of trunk lines and 
branches, with nearly 250,000 miles of track, — enough to 
circle the earth ten times. They are owned and managed by 
private corporations, chartered by the state governments. The 
Pennsylvania system, for example, has between thirty and forty 
charters granted by a dozen states. Who can calculate the 
effect on the economic and political history of our country if the 
construction and management of railways had been adopted as 
part of the national government's business in John Quincy 
Adams's administration, and if Congress now had the same 
control over the steel lines of land transportation that it has 
over the rivers and harbors of the United States ! 
370. The A newspaper editor called on Adams one day to expostulate 

Andrew Jack- "^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ allowing men to continue to serve in the customs 
son, 1828 2cci^ post-office departments who were hostile to the administra- 
tion. When he heard the President's final reiteration of his 
principle not to turn out of office any efficient servant on the 
ground of his political opinions, he bowed politely and assured 
the President that the result of his policy would be that he 
himself would be turned out of office as soon as his term was 
over. The editor's prophecy proved correct. Adams was 
beaten by Jackson in 1828 by the decisive majority of 178 
votes to 83 in the electoral college, carrying only New England 
and a part of the Middle Atlantic States. Jackson's victory was 
hailed as the triumph of democratic principles and an assertion 
of " the people's right to govern themselves." In place of the 
trained statesman and diplomat the people called to the highest 
office in the land a frontiersman and soldier, a man uncontrolled 
in his passions, inflexible in his prejudices, hasty and erratic in 
his opinions, tenacious of his authority ; a man who often be- 
lieved that he was right with such intensity that he thought all 
who differed from him must be either fools or knaves. 



Sectional Ijitei'ests 267 

Adams retired willingly from the office in which he had been 371. Presi- 
continuajly harassed for four years. He afterwards entered the fegacy^^"^ 
House of Representatives, where he served his country nobly 
for almost a quarter of a century, winning such reputation by 
his antislavery speeches that he was called " the old man elo- 
quent " of the House. In leaving the presidency he bequeathed 
to Jackson, as a result of the '' era of hard feelings," a most dif- 
ficult problem and a most dangerous situation. The state of 
South Carolina was on the verge of revolt against the national 
government over the question of the tariff. To the explanation 
of this situation we must now turn. 

The '' Tariff of Abominations " 

The tariff is a list of taxes levied by Congress on goods im- 372. The 
ported into this country. The money thus collected is called revenu^ 
customs ditties. Foreign goods can be lawfully landed only at 
those ports, called '^ ports of entry," where customs officers of 
the United States are stationed to collect the duties according 
to the tariff rates. From the very beginning of its existence the 
United States has employed this method of raising a large part 
of the revenue necessary to pay its expenses. In the year 19 13, 
for example, our imports amounted to the immense sum of 
$1,813,000,000. About half this amount was in dutiable goods 
($857,000,000), and, as the tariff rates averaged over 40 per 
cent, some $319,000,000 were collected by the government 
from this source. 

But besides providing an income for the government, the 373. The 
tariff has another function quite as important. When levied projection 
upon imported goods which compete with those raised or manu- 
factured in our own country, it enables the American producer to 
charge a higher price for his commodity. For example, a high 
rate of duty is levied on woolens imported from England. The 
American manufacturer of woolens, then, can fix his price at the 
level of the English price, ///^i- the cost of transportation from 



26S Natio7ial versus Sectional Intej'ests 

England, plus the duty. In fact, some industries in our country, 
like the iron and steel manufactures, are so highly " pro- 
tected " by the tariff that they can and do sell their products to 
foreign nations at a lower price than they sell them at home. 

No subject has been of more constant interest to our legisla- 
tors than the tariff. Scarcely a ten-year period has passed since 
the foundation of our national government without the introduc- 
tion of a new tariff bill into Congress. One party has main- 
tained that a tariff should be laid for the sake of a revenue only, 
and largely on goods (like silks, coffee, rubber, spices) which are 
not produced in America, and hence cannot enrich the Ameri- 
can manufacturer by enabling him to charge high prices. The 
other party has stood for a " protective tariff " levied on im- 
ports (like cottons, woolens, glass, iron, leather) which do come 
into competition with American manufactures. The revenue-tariff 
men claim that the Constitution nowhere gives Congress the right 
to show favor to certain industries in this country by taxing their 
foreign competitors ; while the protective-tariff men argue that 
as guardian of the general welfare of the country Congress has 
the duty of helping to build up our " infant industries " and of 
protecting the American >vorkingman from the competition of 
the poorly paid labor of Europe. The arguments on both sides 
are many and varied. The revenue theory appeals more gen- 
erally to the trained economic student, but the protective theory 
has always been more popular because it has been made to 
appear more patriotic. " American goods for Americans," '^ the 
encouragement of our infant industries," '^ the protection of 
American labor," " the full dinner pail," are phrases which have 
commended the protective tariff to the voters of this country. 
375. Econom- We have already noticed (p. 190) the arguments of Alexan- 
due to foreign der Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, for establish- 
i7M-i8i^^^°°^' ^"^ ^^ moderate tariff of less than 10 per cent in 1791. The 
United States was then a country of farmers and merchants, 
and our shipping increased tremendously when the long war 
between England and the French Republic (i 793-1802) threw 



Sectional hiterests 269 

the ocean trade into the hands of neutrals. But when we our- 
selves were drawn into the struggle between Napoleon and 
Great Britain, and our shipping was destroyed by embargoes, 
nonintercourse, and war (1807-1815), the merchants of the 
country began to put their capital into manufactures. Cotton, 
woolen, and paper mills, tanneries, furniture factories, iron 
forges, glass and pottery works sprang up. At the close of the 
war with England (18 15) there was close to $100,000,000 
invested in manufacturing industries in this country, giving 
employment to 200,000 workers. 

Just at the same moment the return of universal peace in 376. British 
Europe found Great Britain with an immense amount of manu- in^anufac^- 
factured goods on her hands, which had accumulated while the ^^^^^ 
ports of the Continent were closed to her commerce by Napo- 
leon's decrees (p. 213). These goods Great Britain proceeded 
to " dump " on the United States at low prices, to glut our 
markets, and, as Lord Brougham put it, '' to stifle in the cra- 
dle those rising manufactures in the United States which the 
war had forced into existence." In the year 18 15, more than 
$100,000,000 worth of goods were sent over to this country. 

Hatred of England and patriotic pride in our own new indus- 377. The 
tries, confidence in our destiny as a great manufacturing people, ^^"^ ^^ ^^^^ 
the self-interest of the manufacturers, and the conviction that 
"to be independent for the comforts of life," as Thomas Jeffer- 
son said, " we must fabricate them ourselves, putting manufac- 
tures by the side of agriculture," — all combined to cause the 
passage in 18 16 of a tariff bill which not only continued the 
high duties levied for the extraordinary war expenses in 18 12, 
but even added certain protective duties, raising the general 
tariff average from 15 per cent to 20 per cent. All sections of 
our country contributed to the passage of this bill (see map, 
p. 272), for, although less than 5 per cent of the manufactures 
of the country were in the states south of Virginia in 18 16, 
nevertheless those states hoped to build up mills and factories 
like those in the North. 



270 National versus Sectional hiterests 

378. The But the tariff of 18 16 did not stop the flood of importations 
tariff^ofT824 ^"^om. England, and the manufacturers in the Northern states 

begged Congress to save them from ruin by laying still higher 
protective duties. Tariff bills increasing the rates were intro- 
duced into the House in 1820, 182 1, and 1823, but it v^^as not 
till 1824 that a new tariff passed the House by the narrow 
majority of 107 to 102 votes, and the Senate by almost as slim 
a margin. The tariff of 1824 raised the average duty from 20 
per cent to 36 per cent. Since our revenues from the tariff of 
18 1 6 were more than ample for running the government, and 
a large surplus was piling up in the treasury, this additional 
tariff of 1824 was purely " protective." And more than that, it 
was purely sectional, only three votes being cast for it south of 
the Potomac and Cumberland rivers. 

379. Anti- For the South had discovered in the years since 18 16 that it 
ment develops was not destined to become a manufacturing region and thus to 
in the South g^^j-g \^ ^-j^g benefits of a protective tariff. The extension of the 

cotton area to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and the im- 
mense leap in cotton exportation from 60,000,000 pounds in 
18 1 6 to 200,000,000 pounds in 1824, made it certain that 
the South would continue to devote itself to the production 
of this agricultural staple by slave labor. Without manufac- 
tures, then, or hope of manufactures, the South saw itself 
taxed by the tariff to support the mills and factories of the 
North. The price of raw cotton was constantly falling, owing 
to the great increase of the crop, and the cost of manufac- 
tured goods for which the South exchanged its cotton was 
constantly rising, owing to the increasing tariff. That the tariff 
made wages high was no comfort for the Southern planter, 
because he did not pay wages. He had to buy food and 
clothing for his slaves, and the tariff raised the price of these 
necessities so high that John Randolph wittily said that unless 
the rates were lowered in a short time, instead of the masters 
advertising for fugitive slaves, the South would see the slaves 
searching for their fugitive masters. 



Sectio7ial hitei'ests 271 

Under this economic pressure the South, in spite of its votes 380. The 
for the tariff of 18 16, now challenged the right' of Congress to tests\gai"nst 
levy a protective tariff at all. The Constitution gave Congress *^^ ^^^^^ °* 
the right to raise a revenue, the objectors said, but not to levy 
a tax on the industries of one part of the country to protect the 
industries of another part. The North, with its system of free 
labor and small farms, inviting industry at home and immigration 
from abroad, was rapidly outgrowing the South in population. 
Hence its majority was constantly increasing in the House of 
Representatives. If the Northern majority in Congress were 
to be allowed to pass measure after measure for the benefit of 
their own section, the South would be '' reduced to the condi- 
tion of a subject province." 

The contest entered an acute stage when a still higher pro- 381. Higher 

tective tariff was demanded by the Northern woolen and iron Ju'fief ^7- 

manufacturers in 1827, and the demand was supported by a manded by 
. . V FF J the North, 

protectionist congress held at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the 1827 

following summer. The South was violent in protest. " Have 
you calculated," said a memorial to Congress from the Charles- 
ton Chamber of Commerce, " how far the patience of the 
South exceeds their indignation, and at what precise point 
resistance may begin and submission end ? " " Let New Eng- 
land beware how she imitates the Old England ! " was the 
ominous toast given by C. C. Pinckney at a Southern banquet ; 
while Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, de- 
clared in a fiery speech that when the " Massachusetts lords of 
the spinning jenny and peers of the loom " presumed by virtue 
of their majority in Congress to tax the South, it was " high 
time to calculate the value of the Union." 

The Southerners were not strong enough to keep a new high 382. The 
tariff bill out of Congress in 1828, but they resorted to a shrewd '^l^^f. 
trick to defeat it. Instead of seeking to lower the tariff rates tions," 1828 
proposed, they joined with the Western farmers in greatly in- 
creasing them. A presidential election was approaching, and 
the South appealed to the large anti-Adams sentiment to frame 



2/2 



National versus Sectional Interests 



a tariff bill so preposterous that New England would reject it, 
and so bring dishonor and defeat upon Adams's cause. For 
example, New England wanted a high duty on manufactured 
woolens to exclude English goods, but at the same time it 
wanted cheap raw wool for its factories. It wanted a high duty 
on cordage to protect its shipbuilding industries, but it wanted 
cheap raw hemp for its ropewalks. It wanted a high duty on 
iron manufactures, but cheap pig iron for its forges. All New 



1816 




The Vote on the Tariff Bills of 1816 and 182^ 



England's demands for protection to manufactures were grant-ed 
in the bill, but their benefits were largely neutralized by the 
addition of high duties on raw wool to please the sheep raisers 
of Ohio, on hemp to satisfy the farmers of Kentucky, and on pig 
iron to conciliate the miners of Pennsylvania. In spite of this 
shrewd plan of the South to match the West against New Eng- 
land, and thus to please nobody by pleasing everybody, the fan- 
tastic bill passed the House by a vote of 105 to 94, the Senate 
by a vote of 26 to 21, and became a law by President Adams's 
signature (May 19, 1828). 



Sectional Interests 



'2>n 



The 



Tariff of Abominations," as this bill was called, was 383. ex- 



ixxv. -- treme indig- 

ene of the most outrageous pieces of legislation ever passed by nation in the 



EXPOSITION 



imm wmm^M^^^ 



BY THE SPECIAL COMMITTEE 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



THE TARIFF; 



BEAD AND ORDERED TO BE PUHTED> 



Dtc. 19(A, 1828. 



COLUMBIA, S. C. 

I. Tf . MMS. STATl F»1»IXR. 



f'acsimile of die Tide-page of Calhoun's 
" Exposidon and Protest " 



Congress. It was ^outh 
a low political job, 
which, as Randolph 
said, ''had to do 
with no manufac- 
tures except the 
manufacture of a 
President." It was 
not even (like the 
bill. of 1824) the 
honest expression 
of a section of 
the country. The 
South was furious 
at the failure to 
defeat high tariff. 
Flags were flown 
at half-mast in 
Charleston. Ora- 
tors advised boy- 
cotting all trade 
with the protected 
states, and even ad- 
vocated the resig- 
nation of the 
Southern members 
from Congress. 
Senator Hayne 
of South Carolina 
wrote to Jackson 



that nineteen twentieths of the men of his state were convinced 
that the protective tariff would ruin the South and destroy the 
Union. " We are insulted, proscribed, and put to the ban," 



2/4 National versus Sectional hiterests 

cried Randolph ; if "we do not act, we are bastard sons of 
the fathers who achieved the Revolution ! " North Carolina, 
Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi joined in the protest. 
384. Gal- Vice President Calhoun, on his return from Washington to 

portion " 1828 Charleston, wrote and presented to the legislature of his state 
the famous attack on the " Tariff of Abominations," called the 
" Exposition and Protest." Calhoun maintained, first, that the 
tariff act of 1828 was unconstitutional, since Congress had 
the power to lay taxes only for a revenue ; secondly, that the 
act was sectional, since by it the South, which had but one third 
of the votes in the House (76 out of 213), paid over two thirds 
of the customs duties ; and thirdly, that, as our government 
was an agreement or compact between the states, the national 
government created by that compact could not be superior to 
the states in sovereignty, and could not be itself the judge of 
what its proper powers were. The states, which had bestowed 
on Congress its powers, were the ultimate judges of whether 
or not Congress was overstepping those powers. And hence, at 
any time, a state might challenge an act of Congress and appeal 
to its sister states for the verdict. Congress must then secure 
the votes of three fourths of the states in ratification of an 
amendment giving it the express power in dispute ; for, as 
the vote of three fourths of the states had put the Constitution 
into force, so the same authority should defend the Constitution 
from the encroachment of Congress and the Supreme Court. 

The presidential election of 1828 had taken place a few 
weeks before Calhoun presented his " Exposition," and Andrew 
Jackson had been overwhelmingly chosen to succeed Adams. 
Hoping that the election of a Southerner and slaveholder, an 
ardent champion of " the people's rights," and a bitter enemy 
of the Adams-Clay policy, would bring relief on the tariff ques- 
tion, Calhoun advised South Carolina to wait, before taking 
any radical step, to see what Jackson's first Congress would 
do. So the commercial North and the agricultural South stood 
facing each other in hostile truce, while '' the people " invaded 



Sectional Interests 275 

the White House on inauguration day, standing with muddy 
cowhide boots on the damask-covered chairs, spilling orange 
punch on the carpets, and almost suffocating the old " Hero of 
New Orleans " in the press to shake his hand and declare that 
his inauguration was the inauguration of the rule of American 
democracy pure and undefiled. 



REFERENCES 

Facing Westward : J. B. MacMaster, History of the People of the 
United States, Vol. IV, chap, xxxiii; E. E. Sparks, Expansion of the 
Afnerican People, chaps, xii, xiii, xx, xxii, xxiii ; F. J. Turner, Rise of 
the New West (American Nation Series), chaps, vi, vii, xvii ; Ellen 
Semple, American Histo')y a?id its Geographical Conditions, chaps, ix, 
xiii; WooDROw Wilson, Histoiy of the American People, Vol. Ill, 
chap, iv; Higginson and MacDonald, History of the United States, 
chap, xvii; E. L. Bogart, Economic Histoiy of the United States, chaps. 
xiii, xiv. 

The Favorite Sons : MacMaster, Vol. V, chap, xiii ; E. E. Sparks, 
I'he Men who made the Nation, chaps, viii-x ; Turner, chaps, xi, xv ; 
also The Frontier in American History (in American Historical Associa- 
tion Repoiis, Vol. Ill, pp. 197-227) ; Edward Stanwood, History of 
the Presidency, chap, xi ; J. W. BuRGESS, The Middle Period, chap, vi; 
biographies of John Quincy Adams (by Morse), Benton (by Roose- 
velt), Webster (by Lodge), Gallatin (by Stevens), Clay (by Schurz), 
Jackson (by Sumner), and Calhoun (by Von Hoist), in the American 
Statesmen Series. 

An Era of Hard Feelings : MacMaster, Vol. V, chaps, li-liii; Turner, 
Rise of the New West, chap, xviii ; Burgess, chaps, vii, viii ; Woodrow 
Wilson, Division and Reunion, chap, i ; H. von Holst, Constitutional 
History of the United States, Vol. I, chap, xi ; R. T. Stevenson, The 
Grozvth of the N'ation from i8og to iSjy, chap. ix. 

The "Tariff of Abominations": MacMaster, Vol. V, chap, xlvi; 
Turner, chap, xix; D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the Uiited 
States, chap, viii ; F. W. Taussig, Tariff History of the United States, 
chap, ii ; Edward Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies, chap, 
viii; J. F. Rhodes, Histoiy of the United States from the Compromise 
of i8so, Vol. I, pp. 40-53 ; Cambridge Modem Histoiy, Vol. VII, pp. 
374-3S0; William MacDonald, Select Documents of United States 
Histo?y, ly/d-iSdi, Nos. 44, 45 (for text of protests). 



2"]^ National versus Sectio7ial Interests 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. Thomas H. Benton's Prophecies of Western Growth: MacMaster, 
Vol. V,pp. 24-27 ; W. M. Meigs, Life of Thomas Hart Benton^ pp. 90- 
103 ; Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Hart Benton, pp. 50-58 ; Thomas 
H. Benton, Thirty Years' Vieza, Vol. I, pp. 13, 14; H. A. Bruce, Ro- 
mance of A7}ierica7t Expansion, pp. 106-122. 

2. Robert Fulton and Steam Navigation : Old South Leaflets, No. 108; 
R. H. Thurston, Life of Robert Fulton (Makers of America) ; George 
H. Preble, History of Steam Navigation, chaps, i-iii; MacMaster, 
Vol. Ill, pp. 486-494 ; A. B. Hart, A?fzerican History told by Contem- 
poraries, Yb\. Ill, Nos. 166, 167. 

3. The Selection of a Presidential Candidate : F. W. Dallinger, Nomi- 
nations for Elective Office, pp. 13-48; MacMaster, Vol. V, pp. 55-67 ; 
M. I. Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Party System in the United 
States, pp. 3-16; Edward Stan wood. History of the Presidency, pp. 
125-132 ; J. A. Woodburn, Political Parties and Party Problems in the 
United States, '^^. 165-196; James Bryce, The American Commonwealth 
(abridged edition), pp. 465-485; C. A. Beard, Readings in American 
Governmeiit atid Politics, Nos. 46-50. 

4. The Panama Congress: Stevenson, pp. 215-218; Burgess, pp. 
147-155; Von Holst, Vol. I, pp. 409-433; J. D. Richardson, Mes- 
sages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. II, pp. 318-329; MacMaster, 
Vol. V, pp. 433-459; Hart, Vol. Ill, No. 150; Benton, Vol. I, pp. 
65-69. 

5. The Arguments for a Protective Tariff : Dewey, pp. 191-196 ; Taus- 
sig, pp. 1-67 ; W. M. Grosvenor, Does Protection protect ? pp. 176-201 ; 
Henry George, Protection or Free Trade, pp. 88-120, 154-230 ; Edward 
Taylor, Ls Protection a Benefit? pp. 96-173, 206-232; A. Maurice 
Low, Protection in the United States, pp. 40-59, 94-119 ; H. R. Seager, 
Introduction to Economics, pp. 371-383 ; also article '' Protection," in the 
New International Encyclopaedia. 



CHAPTER X 

"THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON" 

Nullification 

The fathers of the American Revolution in their long contest 386. jeai- 

against the royal governors in the colonies had learned to regard executive ^ 

a stronsf executive as the greatest menace to freedom. There- power in 
® ° America 

fore in the first form of government that they devised (the 

Articles of Confederation) they made no provision at all for an 
executive department, and in the improved Constitution of 1787 
they gave the President only veiy moderate and carefully guarded 
powers in the administration of dom.estic affairs. During the 
first forty years of our national history our Presidents had re- 
spected the spirit of the framers of the Constitution, regarding 
themselves as the agents appointed" by the people to execute 
the will of the people's representatives in Congress. 

But with Andrew Jackson a new type of President appeared. 387. jack- 
Jackson considered himself in no way bound to refer to Con- ^^0^ ^f ^Je ^' 
gress. He thought of himself rather as the champion of the presidency 
great mass of the American people. Congress and the courts, 
he feared, had become corrupted by association with the moneyed 
men of the country, and by too long a tenure of power. The 
favorite historical analogy of Jackson and his supporters was 
the Roman tribune, an officer chosen by the common folk of 
Rome to protect them from oppressive legislation by the rich 
and high-born patricians. 

Jackson interpreted his election in 1828 as a rebuke to the 388. His 
'' corrupt " manipulation of Congress, which had seated Adams of character 
in the presidential chair in 1824. He came into the office with 
the vindictive elation of a man who had been kept out of his 

277 



2/8 National versus Sectional Interests 

rightful inheritance for four years. His strong will, doubly 
steeled by long years of military command, refused to bend to 
entreaty or threat. From his own intense devotion to his country 
he drew the hasty and unwarranted conclusion that all who were 
opposed to him were enemies of that country. He was seldom 
without a personal quarrel, and, like all combative natures, he 
lacked the judgment to know what causes were worth a con- 
troversy and what were not. His partisan temperament acted 
like a strong reagent in chemistry, bringing out the political 
color of every mind with which it came into contact. Every- 
body had to take sides for or against Andrew Jackson. Least 
of all our Presidents — less even than Lincoln or Roosevelt — 
did he sink his personality in his office. He dominated the office 
and even scouted its traditions. He made it Jacksonian. With 
all his rancor against the '' effete dynasties " and " pampered 
minions " of Europe, he often conducted himself more like a 
monarch than like the sworn defender of a democratic constitu- 
tion. So that Professor von Hoist, our German historian, called 
his presidency '' the reign of Andrew Jackson." 
389. The in- A will SO absolute as Jackson's could have little regard for 
of°Ms^con^7 consistency. In 1816 he had written to President-elect Monroe 
dent wirh^his ^^^^ party spirit was a monstrous thing, unworthy of a great and 
earlier pro- free nation; yet when he himself came into office in 1829 he 
showed himself the most partisan President our country has 
ever had. Betweert his inauguration in March and the meeting 
of his first Congress in December he removed over a thousand 
government officials in order to make places for men who had 
supported his campaign, whereas all the previous Presidents 
had together made less than a hundred political removals. He 
had protested vigorously against allowing any member of Con- 
gress to be appointed to an executive office, yet he himself 
chose four out of the six members of his first cabinet from 
Congress. In each of his annual messages he advised against 
a second term, yet he allowed himself, after his first year of 
office, to be announced through the administration newspapers 



'" The Reign of Andrew Jackson " 279 

at Washington and elsewhere as a candidate for reelection in 
1832. He had three times accepted the nomination for the 
presidency by the Tennessee legislature, yet toward the close 
of his second term he called Judge Hugh L. White '' a traitor " 
for accepting the same compliment from the same legislature, 
because his own candidate was Van Buren. He poured out 
his wrath on the leaders of the preceding administration for 
" crooked politics," '' corrupt bargains," jobbery, and underhand 
methods ; yet he himself carried on his government almost ex- 
clusively with the help of shrewd newspaper editors and devoted 
partisans in minor public offices. Even the official cabinet, with 
the exception of Van Buren, was ignored in favor of a group of 
political wirepullers, called, on account of its backstair methods, 
the " kitchen cabinet." 

As for the anti-tariff men of the South, they got small comfort 390. He re- 
from Jackson. In his first message he scarcely mentioned the courage the 
tariff, and in his next one (December, 1830), while admitting ^^"'^•^^^^^j^ 
that the tariff was " too high on some of the comforts of life," tariff 
he nevertheless declared both that Congress had the right to 
levy a protective tariff, and that the policy of protection was 
desirable. Meanwhile an event had occurred in the United 
States Senate which greatly infiamed the hostile feelings of 
North and South, and hastened South Carolina into a policy 
of defiance. 

The sale of public lands in the West was an important source 391. senator 

of income to the national government. The low price of these ^*Son on\Te 

lands tempted speculators to buy them up and hold them for ^^^® °^ public 
^ ^ y r lands, Decem- 

a rise in price. Accordingly Senator Foote of Connecticut, ber, 1829 

in December, 1829, proposed a resolution to the effect that no 

more public land should be put on the market for a time. The 

Southern and Western members of Congress seized on this 

motion as another proof of the determination of the merchants 

of the Eastern states to enrich themselves at the expense of 

the country's growth. These merchants, they said, wanted to 

stop migration to the West, in order to keep a mass of cheap 



28o National ve?'SJis Sectional Interests 

laborers for their factories in the East, just as they wanted high 
duties to protect the output of those factories. 

392. Senator During the debate Robert Hayne of South Carolina left the 
tacks Massa- specific subject under discussion, namely the land sales, to enter 
the North °*^ on a general tirade against the North, and against Massachusetts 

in particular. He accused the Bay State of having shown a 
narrow, selfish, sectional spirit from the earliest days of the 
republic. He declared that the only way to preserve the Union of 
free republics, which the '' fathers " wished this country to be, was 
to resist the economic tyranny of the manufacturing states, which 
had got control of Congress. The proper method of resistance 
had already been set forth by Calhoun in his " Exposition." 

393. Daniel Daniel Webster replied to Hayne in an oration which is con- 
Webster's ' 

reply to sidered the greatest speech ever delivered in the halls of Con- 

^iy26-27^i8y) g^^ss (January 26-27, 1830). After defending Massachusetts 
against the charge of sectionalism, Webster went on to develop 
the theory of the national government as opposed to the mere 
league of states which the Southern orators advocated. Not the 
states, he claimed, but the people of the nation had made the 
Union. " It is, sir, the people's Constitution, the people's gov- 
ernment, made for the people, made by the people, answerable 
to the people." If Congress exceeded its powers, there was an 
arbiter appointed by the Constitution itself, namely the Supreme 
Court, which had the authority to declare laws null and void. 
This authority could not be vested in a state or a group of 
states. Pennsylvania would annul one law, Alabama another, 
Virginia a third, and so on. Our national legislature would 
then become a mockery, and our Constitution, instead of a 
strong instrument of government, would be a mere collection 
of topics for endless dispute between the sections of our 
country. The Union would fall apart. The states would re- 
turn to the frightful condition of anarchy which followed the 
Revolutionary War, and our flag, ^' stained with the blood of 
fratricidal war," would float over " the dismembered fragments 
of our once glorious empire." 



* * The Reign of A ndrew Jackson " 2 8 1 

The echoes of Webster's great speech were still ringing 394. jack- 
through the land when President Jackson gave a public and the'jeffeS)^ 

unmistakable expression of his view of nullification. At a din- birthday din- 
ner, April 13, 
ner in celebration of Jefferson's birthday (April 13), Jackson 1830 

responded to a call for a toast with the sentiment, " Our 

federal Union — it must be preserved ! " The Vice President, 

Calhoun, immediately responded with the toast, " Liberty 

dearer than Union ! " Feeling was intense. For the party of 

Hayne and Calhoun the Union was a menace to liberty ; for 

the party of Jackson and Webster it was the only condition 

and guarantee of liberty. When the advocates of nullification 

in South Carolina were warned by the Union men that their 

course* might bring war, they contemptuously asked these 

" submission men " whether the '' descendants of the heroes of 

1776 should be afraid of war! " 

In the summer of 1832 a new tariff bill was passed by Con- 395. south 
gress. Its rates were somewhat lower than those of the "Tariff nuis theta°i£ 
of Abominations," but still it was highly protective. The South- ^^^^ 0* ^^^s 
ern members of Congress wrote home from Washington that vember, 1832 
no help was to be expected from that quarter. Then the legis- 
lature of South Carolina sent out the call for a state convention 
to consider what action should be taken on the oppressive tariff 
acts. The convention met at Columbia in November, 1832, and 
by the decisive vote of 136 to 26 declared that the tariff acts of 
1828 and 1832 were "null, void, and no law." The people of 
the state were ordered to pay no duties under these laws after 
February i, 1833. At the same time the convention declared 
that any attempt by Congress to enforce the tariff law in South 
Carolina, to close her ports or destroy her commerce, would be a 
just cause for the secession of the state from the Union. Governor 
Hamilton called for 10,000 volunteer troops to defend the state. 

Jackson answered in a strong proclamation. " I consider the 396. jack- 
power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one mati^on'^'^^ 
state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, ... in- 
consistent with every principle on which the Constitution was 



282 



National versus Sectional Interests 



397. Henry 
Clay secures 
a compro- 
mise tariff, 
March, 1833 



founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was 
formed." To Poinsett, collector of the port of Charleston, he 
wrote, " In forty days I will have 40,000 men in the state of 
South Carolina to enforce the law." 

Calhoun, who had resigned the vice presidency to enter the 
Senate, now called on Clay to help in reconciling South Caro- 
lina's claims with the preservation of the Union. Clay, who had 
little desire to see the " military chieftain " in the White House 
directing 40,000 men against South Carolina, worked out a 
compromise tariff, according to which the duties were to be re- 
duced gradually, until in 1842 they should reach the level of the 
tariff act of 18 16. Clay's compromise tariff passed both Houses 
of Congress and was signed by Jackson, March 2, 1833, at the 
same moment with a " Force Bill," which gave the President the 
right to employ the army and navy of the United States to col- 
lect the duties in South Carolina. 

398. The The protesting state accepted the compromise tariff, and by a 

ciisis of civil 

strife averted vote of 153 to 4 the convention rescinded the ordinance of nullifi- 
cation (March 15, 1833). Each side claimed the victory, — South 
Carolina for having compelled Congress to lower the tariff, and 
the United States for having forced South Carolina to retract the 
ordinance of nullification. The crisis of disunion was over, but 
the seeds of discontent remained. Jackson's strong hand had pre- 
served the Union, but his words had not restored unity between 
the warring sections. The language of nullification was not for- 
gotten in South Carolina. Twenty^-eight years later it was revived 
and intensified in a struggle far more serious than that over tariff 
rates, — the great slavery controversy which precipitated the 
Civil War. 



The War on the Bank 

Two days after signing the compromise tariff of 1833 Jackson 
was inaugurated President a second time. He had defeated 
Clay, the National-Republican candidate, in a campaign turning 
on the recharter of the National Bank. 



" The Reign of Andrew Jackson " 283 

We have seen in an earlier chapter how Alexander Ham- 399. The 
ilton, in 1791, got Congress to charter for a term of twenty Nationaf ^^^ 
years a banking corporation which was to do all the govern- ^^^'^ 
ment's financial business ; to enjoy the use, without interest, of 
the money which the Treasury Department collected from duties, 
land sales, and other sources of the national income ; and, in re- 
turn for this favor, to arrange the government's loans, pay the 
interest on the public debt, and negotiate money exchanges with 
foreign countries. We have seen also how five years after the 
expiration of this charter Congress established a second National 
Bank (18 16), with all the powers of the earlier bank and three 
and a half times its capital. 

This second Bank of the United States was very prosperous 400. The 
at the beginning of Jackson's administration. In addition to th?second°^ 
$8,000,000 of the public money, it held some $6,000,000 in de- National 
posits of private persons. It made a profit of $3,000,000 a 
year, from which it paid handsome dividends to its stockholders. 
Its shares of $100 par value sold frequently as high as $140 
each. ^' Besides the parent bank at Philadelphia, with its mar- 
ble palace and hundreds of clerks," says Parton in his " Life of 
Andrew Jackson," " there were twenty-five branches in the towns 
and cities of the Union, each of which had its president, cashier, 
and board of directors. The employees of the Bank were more 
than five hundred in number, all men of standing and influence, 
and liberally salaried. In every county of the Union, in every 
nation on the globe, were stockholders of the Bank of the United 
States. . . . One fourth of its stock was held by women, or- 
phans, and trustees of charity funds — so high and unquestioned 
was its credit." Its notes passed as gold not only in every part 
of the Union, but in the distant cities of London, St. Peters- 
burg, Cairo, and Calcutta as well. 

The opponents of the Bank saw how great a hold such an in- 40l. Opposi- 
stitution could get on the government by showing it financial Bank 
favors in time of stress, and what an influence it could wield in 
politics by contributions from its vast wealth to the election of 



284 



Natio7ial versus Sectional Interests 



candidates favorable to its interests.^ That the government 
should charter such an institution was contrary to the principles 
of democracy. It was encouraging corruption in public life by 
favoring the rich, instead of standing for equal rights and equal 
protection for all. 

Jackson was naturally a bitter opponent of the Bank. In his 
first message to Congress (December, 1829), although the char- 
ter of the Bank had still seven years to run, he spoke disparag- 
ingly of it. " Both the constitutionality and the expediency of 
the law creating this Bank," he wrote, '' are well questioned 
by a large portion of our fellow citizens." Jackson's suspicions 
of the political corruption exercised by the Bank were much 
strengthened by the fact that most of the officers of that institu- 
tion were his political opponents. The hostility of President 
Jackson injured the credit of the Bank. Its stocks fell in price, 
and its managers began to fear that its business would be ruined. 
Therefore its president, Nicholas Biddle, acting on the advice of 
Clay, Webster, and other friends, applied to Congress early in 
1832 for a renewal of the charter. The bill passed the House 
by a vote of 107 to 86. 

It was the year of the presidential election. Clay, who was 
Jackson's opponent, urged the application for a recharter of the 
Bank in order to make campaign material. He thought that 
Jackson would not dare to veto the bill, for fear of losing his 
support in the Northern states, where the Bank was in favor. 
But Clay was mistaken in thinking that Jackson would not dare 
to do what he had determined to do, whether he gained the 
presidency or not. Jackson promptly sent back the bill with a 
veto message which, as Clay wrote to Biddle, had " all the fury 
of a chained panther biting the bars of his cage." 

In his veto Jackson denounced the Bank as a dangerous mo- 
nopoly, managed by a " favored class of opulent citizens," inter- 
fering with the free exercise of the people's will and bending 

1 The managers of the Bank actually confessed that they spent ^58,000 of its 
funds on campaign material (speeches, pamphlets, etc.) to secure the election 
of Henry Clay in 1832. This was after the veto, however. 



"^"^The Reign of Andre^u Jackson'' 285 

the government to its selfish purposes. Furthermore, the Bank 
was keeping the West poor, by concentrating the money of the 
country in the Eastern cities. The Supreme Court had declared, 
in the case of McCulloch vs. Maryland (p. 234), that Congress 
had the right to charter the Bank. Jackson made short work of 
this argument by the astonishing statement that the President's 
opinion of what was constitutional was as good as the Supreme 
Court's. " Each public officer," he wrote, ^' who takes an oath to 
support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he 
understands it. The opinion of the judges has no more authority 
over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, 
and on that point the President is independent of both." 

Clay was never more mistaken than when he appealed to the 405. jackson 
people to defeat Andrew Jackson on the issue of the National \^q g^nk 
Bank. Jackson was overwhelmingly elected in November, 1832, jssue,Novem- 
with 219 electoral votes to Clay's 49. Even Pennsylvania gave 
her 30 electoral votes to Jackson, though only one of the 
Pennsylvania congressmen had voted against the bill for re- 
chartering the Bank. Interpreting his reelection as the man- 
date of the American people for the destruction of the Bank, 
Jackson entered on a financial policy which formed the chief 
feature of his second term, and resulted in as complete a revo- 
lution in the method of handling the government's funds as if a 
man were to draw all his money out of his bank and place it 
in a strong vault built in his own garden. 

Jackson began his attack on the Bank by ordering a special 406. He 
investigation of its condition ; but, to his disappointment, the goveniment 
examiner found it perfectly sound. Both Houses of Congress <ieposits to be 

i^ J o withdrawn 

voted confidence in the Bank as a receptacle for the government's from the 
deposits. Then Jackson fell back on a clause in the charter, ber i, 1833 
which gave the Secretary of the Treasury the right to discontinue 
using the Bank for the government's deposits if he gave his 
reasons to Congress for so doing. Jackson promoted one Sec- 
retary of the Treasury to the State Department, and curtly dis- 
missed another, before he found in Roger B. Taney, of Maryland, 



286 National versus Sectional Interests 

an officer who approved his policy. Taney issued the famous 
order that after October i, 1833, the government should no 
longer use the Bank of the United States for its deposits, but 
would place its revenues in certain state banks (called from this 
order the " pet banks ") in various parts of the country. 

All this happened during the recess of Congress. When the 
Senate met, it voted that the reasons given by Taney for re- 
moving the deposits from the Bank of the United States were 
" unsatisfactory and insufficient," and refused to confirm the 
appointment of Taney as Secretary of the Treasury. Further- 
more, by a vote of 26 to 20 it spread upon its journal a formal 
censure of Andrew Jackson, to the effect that " the President, 
in the late executive proceedings in relation to the public revenue 
[had] assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred 
by the Constitution and the laws, but in derogation of both." 
The censure was unmerited, for the President had not exceeded 
his power in dismissing a cabinet officer, neither had the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury, in ceasing to make government deposits 
in the Bank. The censure was also illegal, for the only way the 
Senate can condemn the President is to convict him in a regular 
trial after he has been impeached by the House of Represent- 
atives. Jackson with perfect right protested against the censure ; 
but it was only after a hard fight of three years that his cham- 
pion in the Senate, Thomas H. Benton, succeeded in getting 
the offensive vote expunged from the journal. 

Jackson's overthrow of the Bank of the United States was 
undoubtedly approved by the majority of American citizens, as 
the removal of a dangerous influence in our political life. The 
act would probably have had little effect on the business of the 
country, had it not come at a critical moment in our industrial 
development. The period just following Jackson's second elec- 
tion was one of overconfidence in our country's growth. Our 
foreign trade was large. The country was out of debt, and the 
customs duties were bringing a large surplus into the Treasury 
every year. The recent introduction of the steam engine running 



^^The Reign of A ndrezv Jackso7i " 287 

on iron rails promised to revolutionize the whole system of slow 
transportation by river, cart, and canal. Individuals, stock com- 
panies, and state governments were anxious to borrow large 
sums of money to invest in land, labor, and building and trans- 
portation supplies, believing that we were on the eve of a 
marvelous " boom " in real estate and commerce. 

The new Western states vied with each other in patriotic proj- 409. The 
ects of extension. For example, Indiana, whose population in u^iation^in^^^' 

18^6 was only about coo, 000, undertook to build 1200 miles western lands 
^ -^ o ' ' and the undue 

of railroad through her forests and farm lands, thereby contract- extension of 

ing a debt of $20 a head for every man, woman, and child in the 1^35^ ' ^ ^^' 
state. Banks multiplied in the West, facilitating rash investments 
by lending on easy terms.-^ These '' wildcat " banks, as they were 
called, issued notes far beyond the legitimate business needs of 
the country, and far beyond their real capital in gold and silver. 
This great increase of the amount of currency put into circula- 
tion was mistaken for an increase in the country's wealth. The 
fever of speculation reached its height in the purchase of Western 
lands. In 1834 about $3,000,000 worth of land was sold by 
the United States government. Next year the sales jumped to 
$14,000,000, and the following year to $24,000,000. 

The purchasers paid for their lands in the paper money of the 410. The 
unreliable Western banks, and the United States Treasury was cuiar^iSsV 
soon overflowing with this depreciating currency. In the summer 
of 1836 Jackson issued his famous Specie Circular, forbidding 
the officers of the Treasury of the United States to accept any 
money but gold and silver (specie) in payment for further sales 
of public land. 

The Specie Circular was the needle that pricked the bubble 411. The 

of speculation. The " wildcat " banks did not have the gold and speSia^ive 

silver to pay for the notes they had issued. Speculators could " boom." The 
^ -^ ■' ^ panic of 1837 

not borrow " hard money " on such easy terms as they had 

1 In 1829 there were 329 of these state banks in the West, and by 1837 the 
number had reached 788. The hope of getting a share of the United States funds 
denied to the National Bank was a great stimulus to the state banking business. 



288 National versits Sectional Interests 

borrowed paper ; and the '' boom " of the West collapsed.^ Land 
*-^^' sales dropped to less than $900,000 for the year 1837. Building 
operations ceased. Long lines of rails were left to rust in the 
Western forests. Thousands of laborers were thrown out of 
employment. The New York Era reported nine tenths of the 
factories in the Eastern states closed by September, 1837. The 
distress of industrial depression following this financial panic 
was increased by the general failure of the crops in the summers 
of 1836 and 1837. The Hessian fly ravaged the wheat fields of 
Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and the price of flour 
rose to $ 1 2 a barrel. The starving populace of New York and 
Philadelphia rioted. Mobs broke into the warehouses where the 
flour was stored, and threw the precious barrels into the street. 
Over 600 banks went down in failure, including the 50 or more 
" pet banks " that held the government's deposits. Our credit 
abroad was almost ruined. Foreign trade languished. At the 
close of the period of depression the Treasury showed a deficit 
of over $10,000,000. 
412. The Five or six years passed before the country fully recovered 

Treasury from the panic of 1837, ^^d confidence returned to merchants, 
system, 1840 i^aj^j^ei-g^ ^^^ investors. The government did not again intrust 
its funds to either a National Bank or " pet banks " of the states. 
The former had been condemned as politically corrupt; the latter 
had proved themselves financially unsound. A system of govern- 
ment deposit was adopted under Jackson's successor. Van Buren 
(1840), which completely separated the public funds from the 
banking business in any form. This was called the Independent- 
Treasury or the Subtreasury system. The government con- 
structed vaults in several of the larger cities of the country — 
New York, Philadelphia, Boston, St. Louis, Charleston, New 
Orleans — and stored its revenues in these vaults. It was not 

1 The citizens of Louisville, Kentucky, presented a memorial to the Senate in 
which they said : " Had a large invading army passed triumphantly through our 
country it could not have so completely marred our prosperity. The countenances 
of our citizens are more gloomy and desponding than when the dread cholera was 
amongst us." 



'' The Reign of A7idrew Jackson " 289 

until the Civil War that our government, under the stress of 
enormous expenses, was again obliged to appeal to the financial 
institutions of the country. It then devised the present system 
of national banks, to which we shall refer in a later chapter. 

A New Party 

Although the contest with South Carolina over nullification 413. impM- 
and the war on the United States Bank were the two most im- ^^^l^^^H^. 
portant events in Jackson's administration, both illustrating sonian era 
vividly the domineering character of the man, they were by no 
means the only matters of importance in his administrations. 
We shall have occasion later to revert to this period when deal- 
ing with the abolition of slavery, the acquisition of Texas, and 
the extension of our settlements into the great region beyond 
the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. The decade 1830-1840 
was, in fine, a new era in our history. It was a period of epoch- 
making inventions and discoveries in the industrial world, of 
far-reaching innovations in politics, of ardent social reforms and 
humanitarian projects. 

We are accustomed to think of battles and treaties as the 414. New- 
exciting events which have brought the changes in a nation's anYdiscover- 

life — and it is true that some few ''decisive batdes " have ies in the de- 
cade 1830- 
altered the course of history. But the steady, silent work of the 1840 

head and hands of a people engaged in invention and industry 

has done more to shape the course of history than all the array 

of armies with bugle and sword. The invention in 1831 of the 

McCormick reaper was the prophecy that our great wheat and 

corn fields of the West would some day produce enough to feed 

half the world. The utilization of the immense anthracite-coal 

deposits of Pennsylvania in the process of iron smelting in 1836 

foreshadowed this mighty age of steel which has superseded our 

fathers' age of wood. The appliance of the screw propeller to 

ocean steamers in 1838 opened the way for the Vaterland. 

And, chief of all, the appearance in 1830 of a steam locomotive 



290 



National versus Sectional hiterests 



on the new twenty-three-mile track of the Baltimore and Ohio 
railway gave promise of the network of nearly 250,000 miles of 
railroad track which covers our country to-day, bringing the 
Pacific coast within four days of New York City. It is an inter- 
esting coincidence that while the steam locomotive was being 
tested and its advocates were laboring to overcome the foolish 
prejudices against its adoption,^ statesmen in Congress were 
ridiculing the idea of our taking any interest in the Oregon 
region beyond the Rockies, on the ground that it would take a 
representative from that country a year to make the journey to 
Washington and back. 





A Railroad Train of 1830 compared with a Modern Locomotive 

By the end of the decade the twenty-three miles of railroad 
had increased almost a hundredfold, and steam trains were 
running in all the Atlantic States from New York to Georgia. 
This improvement in transportation over wagon and canal 
stimulated business in every direction. The demand for the 
products of American farms and factories increased with the 
extension of the means of transportation. As the volume of 
freight traffic grew, cities began to develop rapidly at certain 
distributing or terminal points. Large sums of money were 
concentrated in these cities in business schemes, or invested in 
the stocks and bonds of the new railroads. With the gathering 

1 The locomotive, it was said, would spoil the farms by its soot, and ignite 
barns and dwellings by its sparks. Its noise would frighten the animals so that 
hens would not lay and cows would refuse to give their milk. 



''The Reign of A ndrezv Jacks 07t " 291 

of population and capital in the cities, and the enlargement of 
the small local business concerns into joint-stock companies 
employing hundreds of workmen, the conditions of the laboring 
class and the relations of labor to capital began to claim serious 
attention. 

In 1833 a Labor party held its first national convention at 416. Labor 
Philadelphia, and formulated demands for higher wages, shorter Jhe^decade^ 
hours of work, and more sanitary conditions in shops and fac- 1830-1840 
tories. Trade-unions began to be formed — the workers banding 
together both to keep unskilled laborers out of the trades and to 
enforce their demands for higher wages and shorter hours of 
labor. There were strikes in various cities because the employers 
refused the workmen's demands. The laborers also sought 
relief from the state legislatures. They asked to have " me- 
chanics' lien laws " passed, giving them a claim upon the 
buildings which they constructed, and thus assuring them of 
pay for their labor in case the contractors failed. They pro- 
tested against the competition of goods made in prisons by 
convict labor, demanded free schools for their children, and 
denounced the laws which every year sent 75,000 men to jail 
for debt.^ 

Besides these social and industrial reforms, far-reaching polit- 417. The 
ical changes were in progress in the decade 1830-1840.^ It is fe^^iutton^in 
hardly an exaggeration to say that America became a democ- Jackson's day 
racy in that decade, which was the first to see all classes of her 
people participating actively in the government. In Washington's 
day only some 120,000 persons in a population of 4,000,000 
had a right to vote — about one - in seven of the adult male 
population. The other six sevenths were excluded from the ** 

1 It is hard to imagine a more stupid form of punishment than sending a 
man to jail for debt, forcing him into idleness for a fault which only diligence 
and industry can cure. Yet this custom prevailed on both sides of the Atlan- 
tic well into the nineteenth centur).'. Charles Dickens portrays its evil effects in 
" Little Dorrit." 

2 For the contemporary reforms in England of the poor laws, the penal laws, 
the factory laws, and the labor laws, see Cheyney's Sliort History of England, 
chap. xix. 



292 



National verstis Sectional Interests 



418. The 
political 
machine and 
the "spoils 
system " 



419. The % 
national nom- 
inating con- 
ventions, 
1831-1832 



franchise by high property qualifications or religious tests in- 
herited from colonial days. As late as the election of 1828 
^Rhode Island, with a population of 97,000, cast only 3575 
votes. But in the Jacksonian period the democratic ideal of 
manhood suffrage was transforming the political aspect of the 
whole country. States which had not altered their constitutions 
since their establishment (Tennessee, Mississippi), or even since 
colonial days (Rhode Island, North Carolina), now undertook 
extensive revisions. They extended the right of suffrage, short- 
ened the terms of officers, and transferred the choice of many 
executive officials and judges from the governor to the people. 

This democratic revolution had its evil side. Clever political 
managers, or "bosses," began to build up party machines in 
every state, by organizing the great masses of voters and using 
the victory of their party for the strengthening of the machine. 
Appointments to public offices in the gift of the successful can- 
didates were made as rewards to the men who had done most 
to win the elections, quite irrespective often of their fitness for 
the office. Faithful and able officials and clerks of many years' 
service were removed simply to make room for men of the vic- 
torious party, who were clamoring for their places. This use of 
government offices, from the cabinet portfolios down to the 
humblest clerkships, as prizes of war to be fought for at the 
polls, was vindicated in classic language by a New York politi- 
cian named Marcy, who declared that " to the victor belong 
the spoils." We have seen how Jackson, by his wholesale re- 
movals from office, extended the " spoils system " to the national 
government. 

Another important feature of the democratic revolution of 
the decade 1 830-1 840 was the development of the national 
conventions for nominating the candidates of each party for 
President and Vice President, and for publishing a declaration, 
or "platform," of the principles of the party. In 1831 and 
1832 three such conventions were held, all at Baltimore. The 
Antimasons (a small party formed to combat the secret order 



The Reign of Andrew Jackson 



293 



of the Masons)^ were first in the field (September, 183 1), with 
William Wirt of Maryland as candidate for President. The 
National Republicans followed in December, nominating Henry 
Clay of Kentucky ; and the Jackson men, now calling them- 
selves Democrats,^ met in May, 1832, and indorsed the ticket, 
Jackson and Van Buren. At first each state had one vote in the 
selection of the candidates, irrespective of the number of dele- 
gates it sent to the convention ; but soon the plan was adopted, 
which still prevails, of having each state represented by a number 
of delegates twice as large as its representation in Congress.^ 

1 Since the foundation of our government two great parties have generally 
been opposed to each other (Federalists and RepubUcans, 1 790-1816 ; Whigs and 
Democrats, 1834-1852 ; Republicans and Democrats, 1854 to the present). How- 
ever, many minor parties (or " third parties ") , formed on various issues, have 
appeared in our politics since 1830, but so serried have been the party ranks 
that only twice since the Civil War, namely, in the elections of 1892 (p. 557) and 
1912 (p. 616), have third parties had sufificient strength to carry states and so 
appear in the electoral column, 

2 The political parties are rather difficult to keep^'clearly distinguished, owing 
to the various use of the names Republican and Democrat at different times in 
our histor}^ The following chart will aid the student : 

Date See 

1791-1792 Federalists vs. Dp-ivTorRATir Rppttrt tpan?; P^g^ 

(for strong national govern- 
ment) 



1793 



18 1 6 cir. 
1820 cir. 



[8^.0 



1834 



died out, leaving 



Democratic Republicans 
(for strictly limited national 

government) 
dropped the name Demo- 
cratic and became simply 
the Republicans. 



only the 

Republicans 

(" era of good feeling ") 

who split on the question of " internal improvements," such 

as national aid for the construction of canals and roads, and 

the charter of the National Bank, into two wings : 

National Republicans vs. Democratic Republicans 
the nucleus of a new party who dropped the name Re- 
which, in opposition to publican and became simply 

Jackson, took the name of 

Whigs vs. (Jacksonian) Democrats 

On the great question of slavery the Whig party went to 
pieces soon after 1850, and the present Republican party was 
organized. 

3 At present the Democrats require a two-thirds vote of their convention to 
nominate a candidate, while a simple majority vote nominates the Republican 
candidate. 



192 



224 

230 



265 



294 



385 



294 



National versus Sectional Interests 



420. The 
anti-Jackson 
men form a 
new party, 
1834 



421. The 
composition 
of the new 
Whig party 



All our Presidents and Vice Presidents since 1832 have been 
nominated by national conventions. 

Jackson had not been in office many months before his auto- 
cratic conduct made him many public opponents and private 
enemies. When he issued his famous proclamation against the 
nuUifiers in South Carolina, in December, 1832, the Charleston 
Mercury came out with a flamboyant article against him, in 

which it declared: '^An in- 



BORN TO COMMAND 




KING ANDREW THE FIR&T 



furiated administration has 
been driven to the use of 
brute force. ... If this Re- 
public has found a master, 
let us not live his subjects ! " 
Recalling the Revolutionary 
days, when our forefathers 
fought against the " tyrant 
King George the '^['hird," it 
suggested that the opponents 
of '' King Andrew " revive 
the old name of Whigs ^ which 
in the eighteenth century 
stood for the foes of execu- 
tive tyranny. As the war on 
the United States Bank and 
the removal of the govern- 
ment's deposits in 1833 made 
the President enemies in the North as well as in the South, the 
anti-Jackson men became sufficiently numerous to form a new 
party. In 1834 they took the name of Whigs, which the 
Charleston editor had suggested. 

The nucleus of the Whig party was the faithful group of 
National Republicans, led by Henry Clay, with their devotion 
to a high tariff, the National Bank, and internal improvements 
at the cost of the government — the so-called " American 
System." To these were added now the Southerners, whom 



Cartoon used in the Campaign 
of 1832 



'' The Reign of Andreiv Jackson " 295 

Jackson had offended by his attack on the rights of the states, 
and people from all sections of the country who were opposed 
to his financial policy, his *^ personal" conduct of the govern- 
ment through a group of favorites, and his adoption of the 
odious spoils system. It was essentially an anti-Jackson party. 

The Whigs w^ere not quite strong enough in 1836 to defeat 422. Election 
Jackson's chief henchman and personal choice for the presidency, 1836^° ^'^ren, 
Martin Van Buren of New York. Van Buren had been Vice 
President during Jackson's second term, and it was a great 
triumph for the old hero of New Orleans over the Senate, which 
had passed a vote of censure on him, when he saw Van Buren, 
whom the Senate had formerly rejected as minister to England, 
sworn into the presidency by Chief Justice Taney, whom it had 
likewise formerly refused to confirm as Secretary of the Treasury. 

Van Buren, although he was one of the most adroit and able 423. van 
politicians in our history, and had come into office pledged to po^p'^i^rity"' 
" tread in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessor," failed to 
hold the Democratic party together and to lead it to victory in 
1840. Both public and private causes conspired to his defeat. 
The financial panic of 1837, which followed Jackson's issue of 
the Specie Circular, came in Van Buren's administration, and 
quite naturally he was blamed for it by the unthinking majority. 
Moreover, Van Buren was an aristocratic New Yorker, a rich 
widower, who, according to campaign orators, lived in solitary 
splendor at the White House, eating off golden plates and 
drinking costly wines from silver coolers. The reputation for 
such conduct, however exaggerated the details, was little likely 
to win for Van Buren the support which the " unspoiled West " 
had given to the rough old hero, Andrew Jackson. And it is 
not strange that when the Whigs nominated William Henry 
Harrison of Ohio — like Jackson a frontiersman and Indian 
fighter, a hero of the War of 181 2, and a plain, rugged, honest 
man of the people — the West flocked to his banner and car- 
ried him triumphantly into the presidency in a second ^' demo- 
cratic revolution." 



296 



National I'ersiLS Sectional Interests 



424. Why- 
Clay was not 
the Whig 
candidate in 
1840 



The presidential campaign of 1840 was most exciting and 
spectacular. Henry Clay, the towering genius of the Whig 
party, should have been the candidate, and confidently expected 
the nomination. But Clay's very prominence was against him. 
He had been badly beaten in the election of 1832 for his mis- 
take in forcing the Bank charter into politics to defeat Jackson. 
Many old Jackson men, disgusted with Van Buren, could be 
counted on to vote for any other Whig nominee than Jackson's 



425. The 
famous "hard- 
cider cam- 
paign " of 
1840, and the 
triumph of 
Harrison 




The Eagle of LUtertff, 
StrangrHivff the Serpent 
or CORRUFTIOJT. 




Tru£ American Ticket. 

For President 

WM. HENRI HARRISON. 



Campaign Emblems, 1840 

lifelong enemy. Clay. And finally the growing antislavery senti- 
ment of the North made it desirable for the Whigs to oppose to 
Van Buren (himself an antislavery man from a free state) not the 
slaveholder Henry Clay, but a representative of the free North 
who could also appeal to the frontier enthusiasm of the new West. 
A Democratic paper in Baltimore made the sneering comment 
on the choice of Harrison : " Give him a barrel of hard cider 
and settle $2000 a year on him, and ... he will sit the re- 
mainder of his days in his Log Cabin ... by the side of his fire 
studying moral philosophy." The Whigs immediately took up 



" The Reign of Aiidi-ew Jackso7i 



297 



the challenge, and made the homely virtues and simple tastes 
of the old hero, who had spent his nearly seventy years in the 
defense and service of his country, the chief issue of the cam- 
paign. " Yes, he has lived long enough in the Log Cabin," 
they said, " and we intend to give him rent-free after March 4, 
1 841, the great White House at Washington." Hard cider was 
the beverage on tap at the Whig rallies all over the country. 
The feature of every Whig procession was its Log Cabin, with 

the latchstring out and the 
coonskin nailed to the door, 
wheeled along to the uproar- 
ious shouts of '' Tippecanoe^ 
and Tyler too," and '' Van, 
Van is a used-up man 1 " 
The Whig ticket swept the 
country. Harrison got 234 
electoral votes to 60 for Van 
Buren. The Whigs secured 
both branches of Congress 
too, with a majority of seven 
in the Senate and forty-four 
in the House. 

Harrison's decisive victory 426. condi- 

in 1840 marks the end of the J;°°' ^)lll 
^ close of the 

" reign of Andrew Jackson." Jacksonian 

epoch, 1840 
The date also marks the 

moment when the different sections of our country had become 

fully conscious of their conflicting interests. Two irreconcilable 

forms of civilization had been developing during the quarter of 

a century which followed the War of 181 2. In the North the 

democratic, diversified life of manufacture and commerce was 

attended by rapid growth of population through natural increase 

and immigration from Europe. In the South a more stationary 

1 In reference to Harrison's victory over Tecumseh at Tippecanoe Creek, 
in 18 1 1 (see above, p. 245). 




The Whig Victory of 1840 
The electoral vote 



298 National versus Sectional Interests 

and aristocratic civilization was founded on the wealth of the cot- 
ton fields, which were cultivated by an army of 2,000,000 negro 
slaves. The conflict of these two forms of civilization, with their 
utterly opposite economic needs, their diverging political views of 
the relative rights of the states and the Union, their jealousy of 
each other's extension into the West, and their deepening dis- 
agreement as to the moral right of one man to hold another 
man in bondage, began about 1840 to overshadow all the other 
questions of the period which we have been studying, — the Bank, 
the tariff, the public lands, and internal improvements. Not 
a national election was held from 1840 to the Civil War that did 
not turn chiefly or wholly on the slavery issue. At the close of 
his term of oflice Jackson had written to Congress, " Unless 
agitation on this point [slavery] cease, it will divide the Union." 
And in fact the systems of North and South were becoming " too 
unlike to exist in the same nation." What would the outcome 
be ? Should the Union be divided, or should the institution of 
slavery be abolished 1 

REFERENCES 

Nullification : J. B. MacMaster, History of the People of the United 
States, Vol. VI, pp. 148-177; William M.acDo^ w^iy, facksonian De- 
mocracy (American Nation Series), chaps, iv-vi ; Select Documents of 
United States History, ijy6-i86i, Nos. 53, 55, 56 ; D. F. Houston, A 
Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina (Harvard Historical 
Studies, Vol. Ill) ; J. W. Burgess, The Middle Period, chap, x ; H. von 
HoLST, Constitutional History of the United States, Vol. I, chap, xii ; 
Edward Stanwood, American Tariff Controversies of the Nineteenth 
Century, chap, ix; C. H. Peck, The facksojiian Epoch, chap, v; J. S. 
Bassett, Andreiv fackson, chap. xxvi. 

The War on the Bank : MacMaster, Vol. VI, chap, lix ; MacDonald, 
Jacksonian Democracy, chaps, vii, xiii ; Select Documents, Nos. 46, 50, 51, 
52, 54, 57-62 ; Woodrow Wilson, History of the Ajnerican People, 
Vol. IV, chap, ii ; Ralph H. Catterall, The Second Bank of the 
United States ; Burgess, chaps, ix, xii ; D. R. Dewey, Financial Histojy 
of the United States, chap. ix. ; Bassett, chaps, xxvii, xxviii. 

A New Party : MacDonald, facksonian Democracy, chaps, xi, xiv, 
XVii; J. A. Woodburn, Political Parties and Party Problems in the 



' ' The Reign of A ndrew Jacks o?t " 299 

United States, chap, iv ; MacMaster, Vol. VI, chap. Ixix ; Edward 
Stanwood, Hisioiy of the Presidency, chaps, xv, xvi ; E. E. Sparks, 
The Men who made the Nation, chap, ix ; Peck, chap, xi ; biographies 
of Jackson by W. G. Brown (very brief), William G. Sumner 
(American Statesmen Series), A. C. Buell (2 vols.), and J. S. Bassett 
(2 vols.). 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. Foreign Affairs in Jackson's Administration: J. D. Richardson, 
Messages and Papers of the Presidejits, Vol. II, pp. 437 ff . ; Von Holst, 
Vol. II, pp. 553-570 ; MacMaster, Vol. VI, pp. 236-242, 299-303, 
421-446; J. W. Foster, A Centtiry of Americaji Diplo77iacy, pp. 273- 
281 ; Bassett, pp. 656-683 ; MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, pp. 
200-218. 

2. The Webster-Hayne Debate : Edward Everett, in North Ameri- 
can Review, Vol. XXXI, pp. 462-546; J. B. MacMaster, in Century 
Magazine, Vol. LXII, pp. 228-246; MacDonald, Select Doctcments, 
Nos. 47-49 ; Alexander Johnston (ed. Woodburn), American Ora- 
tions, Vol. I, pp. 231-302. 

3. Coercing South Carolina : Bassett, pp. 552-583 ; T. H. Benton, 
Thirty Years' View, Vol. I, chaps. Ixxx-lxxxvi ; E. P. Powell, Nulli- 
fication and Secession in the United States, pp. 262-288, and Appendix, 
pp. 298-324; MacDonald, Select Documents, No. 56; Houston, pp. 
106-133 ; T. D. Jervey, RobeH V. Hayjie and his Times, pp. 297-356. 

4. Jackson the Autocrat : A. B. Hart, American History told by Con- 
temporaries^ Vol. Ill, Nos. 158, 160; MacDonald, Select Documents, 
Nos. 64, 68 ; Carl R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patrojtage, 
pp. 105-133; Von Holst, Vol. II, pp. 1-39; Buell, Vol. II, pp. 383- 
412 ; C. A. Davis, Major Jack Dowling's Letters (a satire on Jackson) ; 
Higginson and MacDonald, History of the United States, pp. 411-428. 

5. Travel and Transportation in Jackson's Day : A. B. Hart, Slavery 
and Abolition (American Nation Series), pp. 33-48; American History 
told by Contemporaries, Vol. Ill, Nos. 165-168 ; JosiAH QuiNCY, Figures 
of the Past, pp. 188-208 ; MacMaster, Vol. VI, pp. 77-95 ; MacDonald, 
Jacksonian Democracy, pp. 136-147; Charles Dickens, American 
N'otes (ed. of 1842). 



PART V. SLAVERY AND THE 
WEST 



PART V. SLAVERY AND THE 
WEST 

CHAPTER XI 

THE GATHERING CLOUD 

Slavery in the Colonies 

Up to this point we have mentioned only incidentally and oc- 
casionally the institution which has played the most important 
part in the history of our country, — negro slavery. We must 
turn back now to trace briefly the development of that institu- 
tion from the earliest colonial days down to the middle decades 
of the nineteenth century, when it absorbed and superseded all 
other national issues, and led directly to the Civil War for the 
preservation of the Union. 

Before Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from 427. Thein- 
the Indians, even before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, giavery^into 
a Dutch trading vessel brought twenty negro slaves from the ^^® colonies, 
West Indies to the Virginia colony at Jamestown. This was in 
1 6 19, the very year in which the Virginia House of Burgesses 
first met. So by a strange coincidence, at the same moment of 
history the English settlements in America saw the introduction 
of the African bondsman and of the elected representative — the 
beginning of slavery and of democracy. 

Slavery grew but slowly in the colonies. During the whole of 428. Growth 
the seventeenth century probably not more than 25,000 negroes ^j-ade in the 
were brought to our shores to work in the tobacco and rice ^^^J^^^"^^ 
fields of the South, or to serve as butlers, maids, and coachmen 

303 



304 Slavery and the West 

in the wealthier families of the middle and northern colonies. 
The eighteenth century, however, saw a great increase in the im- 
portation of slaves into the colonies. Great Britain, victorious 
in a long war with France and S.pain at the beginning of the 
century (1702-17 13), demanded as one of the terms of peace 
the monopoly of the sorry business of carrying negroes from 
the African coast to the colonies of the New World. Freed 
from French and Spanish competition, this slave traffic proved 
profitable to the English companies that were engaged in it. 
Reputable business firms, high nobles, even Queen Anne herself 
and her courtiers, had large sums of money invested in the slave 
trade, from which the dividends sometimes mounted to fortunes. 

429. The The slave hunters kidnaped the negroes in Africa, chained 
"middle them together in gangs, and packed them closely into the stifling 
passage " holds of their narrow wooden ships, to suffer torments on the 

tropical voyage from the African coast to the West Indies. 
When the hatches were battened down in bad weather a dozen 
of the poor wretches often suffocated, and their bodies were un- 
ceremoniously flung overboard. The brutal ship captains even 
threw sick negroes overboard deliberately, because they were 
insured against the loss of their '' cargo " by drowning, but not 
by death from disease. This awful voyage was called the " middle 
passage," because it was the second leg of a triangular voyage 
from which the British and colonial captains derived large profits. 
They took rum from the New England distilleries to Africa, to 
debauch the innocent natives, whom they seized and brought to 
the West Indies to exchange for sugar and for molasses to make 
more rum. So rum, negroes, and molasses made the endless 
chain of traffic which enslaved the unoffending African, and 
put thousands of pounds into the pockets of the '' enlightened " 
merchants and courtiers of the eighteenth century. 

430. The The horrors of the middle passage moved the colonists at 
vetoes coio- times to protest against the slave trade. The burgesses of Vir- 
ra\n^t «ie^ g^^^i^j f*^^ example, passed several bills forbidding the further 
slave trade importation of negro slaves into the colony ; but the British 



The Gathering Cloud 305 

crown, which exercised the right to veto acts of the colonial 
legislatures, though it had ceased to veto acts of Parliament, 
refused to allow these laws to stand. ^ We must remember in all 
our study and judgment of the problems which the presence of 
the negro in the South has forced upon our country, that it was 
not so much the colonists as the British merchants and capitalists 
who were responsible for the slave traffic in the eighteenth cen- 
tury ; and that among the colonists themselves it was not the 
men of the South alone who were at fault, since the New Eng- 
land rum distillers were responsible for bringing thousands of 
negroes from Africa to sell as slaves in the West Indies. 

We find it hard to realize the inhumanity of earlier genera- 431. slavery 
tions. That our colonial forefathers could have been so jealous Jh^^Joio^es 
for the protection of their own rights and freedom and for the 
proper forms of the worship of God, and still hold human beings 
in bondage, seems to us utterly inconsistent. Yet it is true that 
there was almost no sentiment against negro slavery in the col- 
onies. All the colonial legislatures recognized slavery as legal. 
Only a few individuals protested against it. Even some of the 
Friends (or Quakers), generally recognized as the most brotherly 
of all the Christian sects, kept slaves down to the time of the 
American Revolution.^ 

As the different types of colonial industry developed, — ship- 432. The 
ping, fishing, farming in the North, and the cultivation of the s°averrin\he 
large tobacco, cotton, and rice plantations in the South, — it south 
became evident that the home of the negro was to be that part 
of our land whose climate fitted his physique and whose labor 
fitted his intellect. As early as 17 15 the negroes comprised 
25 per cent of the population of the colonies south of the 

1 One of the charges brought against George III by Thomas Jefferson in the 
original draft of the Declaration of Independence was that he had encouraged 
the slave trade, " violating the most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons 
of a distant people [the Africans] who never offended him, captivating and carry- 
ing them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their 
transportation thither." 

2 The Friends of Germantown, Pennsylvania, protested against the practice 
of slavery as early as 1688. 



3o6 



Slavery and the West 



433. Hu- 
manitarian 
views of 
Southern 
slave owners 



Potomac River, in comparison with 9 per cent in the middle 
colonies and less than 3 per cent in New England. South Caro- 
lina already had, as she has had ever since, a larger negro than 
white population. Before the close of the eighteenth century 
every state north of Maryland except New Jersey had pro- 
vided for the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery, while 
Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793 had fixed 
the institution firmly on the South. The English colonies in 
America, therefore, were not a free land which was gradually 
encroached upon by slavery, but a land in all of whose extent 
slavery was at first 
recognized by law, 
and only later ex- 
cluded from those 
portions where it 
was economically 
unprofitable. 

A small number 
of plantation own- 
ers, like Washington, 
Jefferson, Madison, 
and Randolph, in- 
fluenced no doubt 
by the spirit of humanity and philanthropy which was abroad in 
the later years of the eighteenth century, had misgivings as to 
the justice of holding slaves. The considerable number of free 
negroes in the South at the time of the Civil War shows how 
many slaves were allowed to purchase their liberty or received 
it as a gift from their masters. Still, the econc -nic argument was 
stronger than the moral one. No planter could afford to pay 
wages to free negroes when his neighbor employed slaves. 
However much the enlightened men of the South deplored the 
existence of slavery from the point of view of ethics and 
humanity, they found themselves part of an industrial system 
which seemed to demand the negro slave for its very existence. 




The Cotton Gin 



TJie Gathering Cloud 307 ' 

Naturally the spirit of liberty aroused at the time of the Am.-- 434. Anti- 
ican Revolution touched the question of negro slavery. The me'u7nThe'' 

Continental Congress in 1774 and again in 1776 forbade the f-^^^ition- 
r 1 • • r 1 • , ^rv epoch 

further importation of slaves into the colonies. The first ai ti- 

slavery society was formed at Philadelphia in the very year of 

the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill (1775). Benjar i^' 

Franklin was its president the last few years of his life. In .• 

'' Notes on Virginia," published just after the close of the v > 

(1784), Thomas Jefferson, one of the most pronounced of Hit 

antislavery slaveholders, suggested that the negroes might be 

purchased by the state and colonized, an idea which was ch "- 

ished by many antislavery statesmen, including Abraham Lincc.j, 

up to the beginning of the Civil War. The one splendid acccni- 

plishment of the antislavery spirit of the Revolutionary ep( \ 

was the dedication to perpetual freedom of the vast territ< rv 

between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and the Great Lak :;s, 

by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 (p. 165).-^ 

The Constitution of the United States was being framed dur iig 435. slavery 

the very same days that the Northwest Ordinance was debated, the Consti- 

Although there were men in the Convention at Philadelphia -'^**°° 

who would gladly have seen slavery abolished in the Uniicc' 

States, that subject was not discussed, because nobody seri 

ously thought that the abolition of slavery lay within the powers 

of the Convention. The only questions considered were : fij -t. 

Whether the national government, which was to have control ca 

foreign commerce and immigration, should allow any more negio 

slaves to be brought to the United States ; and second, What was 

the political status of those negroes who were already in the 

country. We have 'already seen in our study of the Constitution 

(p. 170) how the Convention arrived at compromises on b()th 

these points by prohibiting Congress from interfering with tiie 

slave trade for a period of twenty years (until 1808), and by 

counting three fifths of the negro population in making up the 

1 A bill introduced into the Congress by Jefferson in 1784, to make all ''k: 
territory west of the Alleghenies free soil, was lost by only one vote. 



^o8 



Slavery and the West 



census of the states for representation in Congress. The im- 
portant point for us here is not the exact form of compromise 
adopted, but rather the fact that the men who made the Con- 
stitution, of the United States not only did not contemplate the 
abolition of slavery, but even agreed that the importation of 
slaves from Africa and the West Indies should not be inter- 
fered with for a score of years, — a period long enough to 
supply the South with sufficient slaves to insure the indefinite 
continuance of the institution.^ 
426. Sum- Thus the history of slavery during our colonial period presents 

Savei-y situa- ^ sad picture of violence, greed, and stunted moral sense. Our 

tioE in the . forefathers endured the evils of the slave system for the sake of 
colonial days ■' 

the profits it yielded. A few large slaveholders, like Jefferson 

and Washington, knew that slavery was a violation of the moral 
law,^ but they could not foresee the enormity of the evil which 
slavery was to entail upon a future generation in the South. 
And so, with mingled feelings of dismay at the growing num- 
bers of slaves and a vague hope that '' somehow good might be 
the final goal of ill," the men who freed our country from politi- 
cal oppression by a tyrannical king in England, left it exposed 
to a social curse within its own border more serious than unjust 
taxation or harsh laws of trade. 

The Missouri Compromise 

437. ooa- A little group of antislavery people in the North had from 

Sone/t</ the first been dissatisfied with the tolerant attitude of the Con- 

eS-'^'Jjc^^^"' stitution toward slavery. In Washington's first administration 

(1790) they began a series of petitions to Congress for the 



1 It must in fairness be said that the members of the Convention could not 
foresee the invention of the cotton gin (1793) and the immense increase in the 
demand for slaves which that invention would cause. 

2 Jefferson, in discussing slavery, said, # I tremble for my countiy when I 
reflect that God is just " Washington wrote to his secretary, Tobias Lear, that 
he was anxious to " dispose of a certain kind of property [negro slaves] as soon 
as possible." John Randolph (who liberated his slaves) declared that "all other 
misfortunes of Ufe were small compared with being born a master of slaves." 




The Gathering Cloud y 

abolition of slavery in the United States, which were continy-J 
for three quarters of a century, to the close of the Civil W. 
Congress returned to the first petition of 1790 the same ans\^ 
that it gave to all the later ones, namely, that slavery, being 
" domestic institution," was subject to the laws of the states, r 
of the national government. Even the repeated attempts to ^ . 
Congress to impose a tax of $10 a head on imported slav( 
which was authorized by the Constitution, all failed. To be sut 
Congress did, at the expiration of the twenty-year period pre 
scribed by the Constitution, forbid the further importation of 
African slaves (from January i, 1808); but that was the only 
^,,-_ , . piece of legislation hostile -to 

RUN away, on the xd , a u rr.r.crr-^^. 

Day ot Mayhft, a youcg slavery passed by Congre..s 

Negro Boy, named fte, thw during the thirty years from 

Country born, formerly be ° • r r^ 

longed io Capt. fJugb Hcst. the inauguration of George ^ 

rSu^foS/':/;:' «% Washington to the Missouri 
the Worlc Hoofe io Ctarks <lo^s. ihaii Compromise of 1820. 

have 5 / fcward On ihccahfrary who- ^ 

ever harbours the faid Boy, maydcpend On the Other hand, the 12- 438. Legisla- 

^^^"^^^^^^^"^'^^twJ'aV. vors which slavery received at '^:^::;^ 

WALTER LUNBARy Ter- the hands of Congress durir,- ^^^o-xSig 

Advertisement for a Run- ^his period were so many and 

away Slave ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ slaveholders 

came generally to regard their institution as sanctioned by the 
will of the nation. In 1792 Kentucky was admitted to the Union 
with a constitution which sanctioned slavery. In 1793 Congress 
passed a fugitive-slave law, allowing a slave owner to reclaim ^ 
runaway negro in any state in the Union by a mere decision of 
the local judge, without jury trial. In 1796 Congress aocepted , 
North Carolina's cession of land west of the Alleghcnies, promis- 
ing not to prohibit slavery therein ; and immediately Tennessee, 
which lay within this territory, was admitted as a slaveholding 
state. In 1798 the territory of Mississippi was organized, and 
only twelve votes were cast in Congress in favor of excluding ^ 
slavery from its borders. In 1803 the immense territory of 
Louisiana was purchased from Napoleon under terms which 



3IO 



Slavery and the West 



prctected slavery wherever it already existed in the territory. In 
1805 Congress, by a vote of 77 to 31, defeated a bill to emanci- 
pate the slaves in the national domain of the District of Colum- 
bia. In 18 1 2 the lower end of the Louisiana territory was 
admitted to the Union as the state of Louisiana, with slavery — 
';n3 third slave state to be admitted since the organization of the 
government, as against the two free states of Vermont (1791) 
and Ohio (1803). 

It is no wonder, in view of such generous recognition of the 
slavery interests, that the Southerners were taken by surprise at 
the serious opposition aroused in Congress when the slave- 
holding territory of Missouri^ applied for admission to the Union 
as a state in the autumn of 18 18. The bill for the admission 
o ' Missouri wac,(f)id before the House of Representatives for 
■ ■■ ibate on February 13, 18 19. The same day James Tallmadge 
f New York moved as an amendment to the bill, "That the 
farther introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be pro- 
Mbited . . . and that all children born within the said state 
:ter admission thereof into the Union shall be free at the age 
' f 25 years." The amendment passed the House by a narrow 
margin, but was promptly and decisively rejected by the Senate 
(31 to 7); and the Congressional session of 1818-1819 came 
Lo an end with Missouri's application for statehood still pending. 
During the summer of 18 19 excitement over the Missouri 
question was aroused throughout the country. Mass meetings 
vere held in the Northern states condemning the extension 
•f slavery, and in the Southern states demanding the rights of 
he slave owners under the Constitution. The legislatures of 
Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and even slave- 
lolding Delaware passed resolutions against the admission of 
Missouri to the Union with slavery. When Congress met in 
December, 18 19, it was overwhelmed with petitions for and 
igainst the Tallmadge amendment. 

1 When the state of Louisiana was formed in 1811, the name of the Louisiana 
erritory above 33° was changed to the " Territory of Missouri." 



TJie Gathering Cloud 311 

There were severalimportant points involved in the admission 441. impor- 
of Missouri. In the first place, there was an equal number of M^touri^^^ 
free and slave states (eleven each) in the Union at the close of <iuestion 
the year 18 19, wh'ch made an even balance between the two 
sections in the Senate. Secondly, Missouri was to be the fiirst 
state wholly west of the Mississippi Rivfer created out of terri- 
tory acquired since the formation of the Union ; and it was felt 
that if the first state formed from this territory were opened to 
slavery, a precedent would thereby be established for admitting 
all future states on the same basis. When Rufus King of New 
York declared that we must have '' free citizens to defend our 
western borders," he drew down upon him the wrath of the 
advoc:ates of slavery in Congress. ''They gnawed their lips and 
clenc'ied their fists as they heard him," w^te/ John Quincy 
Ada^-'is in his diary. A third point to consider in the Missouri 
que5tior\ was *he treaty of purchase by which the territory was 
acqi^rc^ froi .. Napoleon. By the third article of that treaty 
the ^"^habitants of the territory were guaranteed '' protection of 
thei' ^^.berty, property, and religion." Many planters had taken 
their slaves into the Missouri territory, relying on this guarantee. 
Could Congress now fairly deprive them of their '' property " by 
emancipating all negroes born in the new state ? 

But the most serious question involved touched the power of 442. Has 
Congress under the Constitution to pass the Tallmadge amend- righ?trim-^ 

ment. Cons^ress had the express power to " admit new states P^se condi- - 
° ^ ^ tions on new 

to this Union." But did it have the right to impose restrictions states for 

on new states as a condition of admission ? The Tallmadge men the union? 
argued that the power to admit necessarily implied the power to 
refuse to admit ^ and hence the power to make conditions on which 
it would admit new states to the Union. They cited the case of 
the admission of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, which had been re- 
quired to frame antislavery constitutions. On the other hand, the 
opponents of the amendment declared that Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois might legally have insisted, when they became states, 
on determining for themselves the nature of their " domestic 



312 Slavery and the West \ 

institutions," which had been prescribed for them by Congress so 
long as they were a part of the Northwest Territory. For Con- 
gress to determine on what terms a state should come into the 
Union, they argued, would be to substitute for our federal Union 
of equal states a centralized despotism ''c M not Congress, 
with such power, reduce a state to the Tn(^sT > i ct position of 
dependence ! The '' Union " then would be a ;.:ion between a 
giant Congress and pigmy states, between absolutism and impo- 
tence. The states which Congress should admit \jx the Union 
must have the same powers and privileges as \\\v .res v^hich 
originally united to form the Union. 

443. South- Confident that their constitutional arguments :or ciavery 
for the^exten- were sound, the Southern orators pre reeded to show not only 
slavery ^"^"^ ^^ institution was legal but that its extension info the 

new West was desirable. Granted that slavery was a m'Oi*a. evil, 
would it not be better, they said, to diminish the e*;"^ by sp*^"Ci(iing 
it ? Would not the black cloud be lightened by difi^^sion ? 'iince 
not another negro slave was to be brought to America, "^VDuld 
not the evils arising from those already Iiere b?? Its-envf"^ the 
more widely the slaves were scattered? 

444. A com- Early in the session of i8 19-1820 an event occurred which en- 
promisemeas- ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ o i , . , tt 

ure intro- abled the proslavery Senate and the antislavery House to come 

Senate°?82o^ to an agreement on the Missouri question. The province of 
Maine, which since 1677 had been a part of Massachusetts (see 
p. 48), got the consent of Massachusetts to separate from it 
and apply to Congress for statehood. Accordingly, in Decem- 
ber, 18 19, Maine, with an antislavery constitution already pre- 
pared, asked for admission into the Union. By way of com- 
promise, to end the debate, the Senate combined the Maine 
and Missouri bills, and added to them, in the place of the 
Tallmadge amendment, one by Senator Thomas of Illinois, 
which prohibited slavery in all the Louisiana Purchase territoiy 
lying above 36° 30' north latitude, except the proposed state 
of Missouri. The Maine-Missouri-Thomas compromise bill was 
then sent to the House. 



The Gathering Cloud 313 

In return for the admission of the free state of Maine, 445. Maine 

and for the exclusion of slavery from the greater part of the Missou^ri^ 

Louisiana Purchase territory, the House by a vote of qo to 87 (slave) ad- 

■' •' y I mittedas 

dropped the Tallmadge amendment, and to keep the balance in states 

the Senate, let Missouri enter the Union as a slave state. 

President Monroe signed the bills for the admission of Maine 

and Missouri on the third and sixth of March, 1820, after being 

assured by every member of his cabinet except John Quincy 

Adams that the prohibition of slavery in the Louisiana tract 

north of 36° 30' applied to the region only so long as it was 

under territoiial government.-^ 

The Missouri Compromise was greatly to the advantage of 446. The 

the antislavery advocates of the North. They surrendered, to compromise 

be sure, the constitutional claim of the Tallmadge amendment It^°If^!.^° 
' ^ the North 

that -Congress had a right to impose restrictions on a new state 
as a condition of entering the Union ; and they allowed the first 
state formed out of the great Missouri territory to come into 
the Union with a proslavery constitution. But in return they 
secured the exclusion of the slaveholder from nine tenths of the 
remainder of the vast region extending from Louisiana to the 
Canadian boundary and from the Mississippi to the Rockies. 
Arkansas and Florida were the only territories of the United 
States open to slavery after the passage of the Missouri Com- 
promise bill. It is hard to understand why the South, after its 
valiant fight against the Tallmadge amendment, and with its 
insistence on the need of new territory for the extension of 
slavery, should have accepted this Compromise. It saw its 
mistake later, and secured the repeal of the Compromise. But, 
for the present, harmony seemed to be established. The " era 

1 As a matter of fact, Missouri, owing to her incorporation of a clause in the 
new constitution, prohibiting free negroes from entering the state, was not ad- 
mitted until August, 1S21, while Maine, whose constitution was already framed 
when she applied for statehood, was admitted in 1820. It is important to note 
here, in view of a later controversy, that Congress, by this Compromise Bill, ex- 
cluded slavery from territory of the United States, and that all of the seventy- 
five votes in the House from the states south of Pennsylvania were cast in favor 
of the bill. 



314 



Slavery mid tJie West 



447. Signifi- 
cance of the 
Missouri 
Compromise 



of good feeling," though threatened, was undisturbed, and 
Monroe was reelected to the presidency in the autumn follow- 
ing the Compromise by the unanimous voice of the nation. 

The Missouri Compromise was one of the most important 
measures ever passed in our history. First of all, it connected 
the question of slavery with westward expansion, and revealed 
to farsighted men like Adams and King in the North, and 
Jefferson and Calhoun in the South, the fact that the develop- 
ment of our national domain was to be a struggle between the 




Status of Slavery by the Missouri Compromise 



advocates of freedom and slavery. Furthermore, the South saw 
for the first time, in the Missouri debates, how determined anti- 
slavery sentiment was growing in the North, and resented the 
insinuations of Rufus King and other Northern orators that the 
slaveholders were seeking undue power in the government or 
fostering an undemocratic civilization. " Then again, the Missouri 
debates were an important factor in that change from the na- 
tional to the sectional point of view, on the part of Calhoun 
and other Southern leaders, which we have already studied in 



The Gathering Clotid 315 

connection with the tariff agitation (pp. 270-274). These men 
saw how dangerous such powers as those which the Tallmadge 
amendment attributed to Congress would be to slavery, and 
consequently they grew more insistent on the doctrine of the 
sovereignty of the states. 

Finally, and perhaps most significant of all, the Missouri 443. slavery 
debates emphasized the ethical side of the slavery question as mora?issue 
it had not been emphasized before. The Northern orators could 
not help seeing that their Southern opponents had the stronger 
legal argument, but in return they appealed to the moral 
sense of Congress and the country at large, insisting that a 
slave population was an enfeebled population, and that the ex- 
istence of human bondage in our country was an outrage to 
the sublime principles of the Declaration of Independence. To 
meet the moral objections of the North the Southerners now 
began to defend as a blessing to the negro the system which 
they had earlier been inclined to deplore as a necessary evil. 
Hard feeling began to develop between the two sections. The 
North accused the South of the sin of willfully maintaining an 
inhuman and barbarous institution, and the South charged the 
North with overlooking all the social and economic arguments 
for slavery, and only encouraging discontented negroes to rise 
and massacre their masters. 

The aged Jefferson wrote of the Missouri Compromise : 449. it 
" This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awak- other political 
ened me and filled me with horror. I considered it at once as questions 
the knell of the Union." The echoes of this alarm bell rang 
through North and South, growing louder and louder each 
decade, till they drowned all other issues of the century in 
their clamor, — the Bank, the tariff, public lands, the currency, 
internal improvements, foreign negotiations, and domestic ex- 
pansion. The slavery question invaded our pulpits and pervaded 
our literature. It seized on press and platform. It disturbed 
our industries and commerce. And finally it precipitated the 
mighty strife of the Civil War. 



3i6 



Slavery a7id the West 



The Abolitionists 

450. The In the year in which Missouri was finally admitted to the 

abolitionist Union, Benjamin Lundy, a New Jersey Quaker, began to 
sentiment publish in Ohio the Genius of Ufiiversal Emancipation^ a weekly 
periodical devoted to the cause of the abolition of slavery. To 
Lundy belongs the credit of organizing into a strong united 
movement the antislavery sentiment in our country. He was 
the first American to embrace the cause of negro emancipation 
as a life mission, advocating the establishment of colonies of 
liberated slaves on the island of Hayti. He traveled thousands 
of miles, often on foot, through nearly every state of the Union, 
addressing meetings, appealing to churches and colleges, and 
forming antislavery societies wherever he went. 

Previous to the bitter Missouri debates the slaveholding 
states were as promising a field for emancipation activity as 
the free North. Antislavery societies existed in Kentucky, 
Delaware, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia 
before a single one was formed in New England. The plan to 
get rid of the curse of slavery by purchasing the negroes and 
establishing them in a colony on the African coast was almost 
exclusively a Southern measure. It was first proposed by 
Thomas Jefferson in 1784. In 1816 a society was formed for 
the colonization of free negroes, and a few years later the set- 
tlement of Liberia ('' free land ") was actually established on 
the western coast of Africa. A nephew of George Washington 
was the society's first president, and he was followed by Henry 
Clay. Hundreds of influential slaveholders, like Jefferson and 
Randolph, were members of the society. The governor of 
Virginia even proposed to the legislature as late as 1820 that 
the state devote a third of its revenue to the purchase and 
colonization of negroes. But the colonization scheme utterly 
failed. In spite of an appropriation of $100,000 by Congress, 
the new society was able to carry only about a thousand negroes 
to the distant African coast during the decade 182 0-1830, 



The Gathering Cloud 317 

and most of those died soon after landing, from the ravages of 

malarial fever and the attacks of savage neighboring tribes.^ 

The rapid extension of cotton cultivation after the second 452. change 

war with England, the ill success of the colonizing movement, tude^of^the 

and the bitterness aroused by the Missouri debates produced ^^^^^ 

■' ^ towards 

a great change in the attitude of the South towards slavery, emancipa- 

After the Missouri Compromise was passed, free discussion of 1820' 
the evils of slavery began to die out in the South, being branded 
by the political and social leaders as treason to the interests of 
their section of the country. On the other hand, the little group 
of Northern abolitionists began to redouble their efforts to rid 
the country of the disgrace and curse of human bondage. 

On a visit to Boston in 1828, Benjamin Lundy met a young 453. wiiiiam 
man of twenty-two, named William Lloyd ^Garrison, who was ^n^ounds"' 
earning a bare living by doing compositor's work in various The Liberator, 
printing offices. Young Garrison was immediately won to the 
cause of abolition, and a year later joined Lundy at Baltimore 
in the editorship of the Genius of Universal Emancipation. 
Garrison announced in his first article that all slaves were 
" entitled to immediate and complete emancipation." This 
position was too radical for Lundy, who, with some regard for 
the property of the slaveholders, advocated a gradual eman- 
cipation. So the partnership was promptly dissolved, and 
Garrison set up his own press in Boston, from which on 
New Year's Day, 1831, he issued the first number of The ^ 
Liberator. He had neither capital nor influence. His office was 
" an obscure hole," which the police had difficulty in finding. 
He had but one man and a negro boy to help him in compo- 
sition and presswork. He himself was editor, typesetter, proof- 
reader, printer, and distributor of The Liberator^ and the very 
paper on which the first number was printed was bought on 
credit. 

1 Between 1820 and i860 the Society spent ^1,806,000 and colonized but 
10,500 negroes — fewer than the increase by births in one month. Obviously, 
trying to remove the negroes from the South by colonization was like trying to 
bail out the sea with a dipper. 



318 



Slavery and the West 



454. Garri- 
son's anti- 
slavery 
manifesto 



In a small chamber, friendless and unseen, 

Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man. 

The place was dark, unfurnitured, and mean. 
Yet there the freedom of a race began.i 

Garrison was of the stern, unyielding, undaunted race of the 
ancient Hebrew prophets. He saw, and wished to see, only one 
truth, namely, that slavery was sin. '' On this subject," he 
wrote in his first announcement in The Liberator, " I do not 
wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No 1 no! Tell 
a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm, ... tell 
the mother to gradually extricate the babe from the fire into 




455. Nat 

Turner's in- 
surrection, 
1831 



Reduced Facsimile of the Heading of The Liberator 

Which it has fallen -but urge me not to use moderation in a 

cause like the present I will be as harsh as truth and as 

uncompromising as justice I am in earnest -^ I will not 

equivocate -I will not excuse -I will i;ot retreat a single 
mch — AND I WILL BE HEARD! The apathy of the people is 
enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to 
hasten the resurrection of the dead." 

A horrible massacre, by negroes, of over sixty white people 
(mostly women and children) occurred in Southampton County, 
Virginia, in the late summer of the same year that The Liber- 
ator was started. Nat Turner, the slave who led the insur- 
rection, was a fanatical lay preacher who could read and write. 
1 James Russell Lowell, " To William Lloyd Garrison," 



TJie Gathering- Cloud 319 

The Southerners laid the dreadful deed to the influence of The 
Liberator and other abolitionist literature that was being sent 
into the slave states. Their rage against Northern abolitionists, 
especially Garrison, knew no bounds. They demanded that the 
legislatures of the free states should silence all antislavery 
agitation by a strict censorship of the press and of the public 
platform. They increased the severity of their own laws in 
restraint of negroes, both slave and free. In Delaware the 
assembling of more than six negroes was forbidden. In Virginia 
thirty-nine lashes were given a slave who was found with a gun 
in his possession. A law of Tennessee provided that no slave 
" dying under moderate correction " (i.e. the slave driver's lash) 
could be held by the courts to have been " murdered." A 
wave of apprehension ran through the South lest the South- 
ampton horror should be repeated. 

The majority of the business and professional men of the 456. North- 
North were scarcely less hostile to the abolitionists of the to^thrabo-^ 
Garrison type than were the slaveholders themselves. In fact, iitiomsts 
Garrison declared that he found '' contempt more bitter, opposi- 
tion more active, detraction more relentless, prejudice more stub- 
born," in New England than in the South. It was not in 
Charleston or Richmond, but in Boston that he was dragged 
through the streets, with a rope around his neck, by a " mob of 
respectable citizens," to be tarred and feathered on the Com- 
mon, and was with difficulty rescued by the police and lodged 
in the city jail for his safety. As a rebuke to the abolitionists 
the free negroes in many cities of the North were treated with 
contemptuous discrimination ; they were ejected from cars and 
coaches, assigned to corners in the churches, and excluded from 
the schools. Daniel Webster assured an anxious Southern cor- 
respondent in 1833 that "the North entertained no hostile 
designs toward slavery " ; and Charles Sumner (who twenty-five 
years later nearly paid with his life for his advocacy of free soil) 
declared that " an omnibus load of Boston abolitionists had 
done more to harm the antislavery cause than all its enemies." 



320 



Slavery and the West 



457. Con- 
trast between 
antislavery 
men and abo- 
litionists 



We must distinguish carefully between the antislavery men, 
like Webster and Sumner, on the one hand, and the Garrison 
abolitionists on the other. The former recognized that the slavery 
question was exceedingly complicated, involving considerations 
of property, of social rank, of the rights of the states, and of the 
established industrial system of the South, as well as the moral 
issue. But the Garrison abolitionists saw only that slavery was 
sin, the violation of the Christian principle of the brotherhood 
of man. When therefore the moderate emancipators said that 
slavery was '' the calamity of the South and not its crime," the 
abolitionist replied that it was a calamity because it was a crime. 
When the moderates suggested that the nation should assume 
the burden of emancipation by appropriating to it the revenues 
from the sale of the public lands, the abolitionists declared for 
immediate, unconditional, and uncompensated emancipation. 
The antislavery men were willing to proceed according to the 
methods recognized by the Constitution ; that is, to confine their 
demands to emancipation in the District of Columbia (which was 
national territory), or to petition for an amendment to the Consti- 
tution giving Congress the power to abolish slavery in the states. 
But Garrison denounced the Constitution as "a covenant with 
death and an agreement with hell," and burned a copy of it 
publicly to show his horror of its recognition of slavery. He 
proclaimed as his motto, " No union with slaveholders ! " and 
forbade his followers to vote or hold office or even take the 
oath of allegiance to a Constitution which supported slavery.^ 

As the abolitionists were very active in organizing societies 
in every town and flooding the South with literature, while the 
more moderate antislavery ' men refrained from speaking their 
mind for the sake of preserving as much harmony as possible 
between the two sections of the country, it was only natural 

1 Garrison's refusal to take any part in politics, joined with other doctrines 
which were extreme for his day, such as the recognition of woman's rights, a free 
and rational interpretation of the Bible, and the condemnation of all resist- 
ance by force, prevented his becoming the generally recognized leader of the 
antislavery or even the abolitionist movement. He was always the leader of an 
extremist sect. 



TJie Gathering Cloud 321 

that the South should believe the extreme abolitionist senti- 
ment to be much more widespread in the North than it really 
was. In fact, the abolitionists might have long remained a small 
sect of extremists, had not the Southerners themselves driven 
hundreds into their ranks by trying to muzzle the liberty of 
petition and debate in Congress, thus identifying the cause of 
slavery with the denial of free speech. 

The introduction of abolitionism into Congress marks an 459. The 
important epoch in the slavery question. During the early tJoversv^ ^°'^' 
years of Garrison's activity (1829-1833) Congress was busy enters con- 
with the agitation over the " Tariff of Abominations," the re- 
newal of the Bank charter, the great Webster-Hayne debates 
on sectionalism, and the crisis of nullification. The slavery 
issue was kept m the political background, being confined to 
the lecture hall and the abolitionist journals. But from the 
session of 183 4- 183 5 on, numerous petitions for the restriction 
or abolition of slavery were presented in both Houses of Con- 
gress.-^ The attitude of the Southern members toward such 
petitions was shown when Wise of Virginia declared in the 
House (February, 1835) : " Sir, slaveiy is interwoven with our 
very political existence and guaranteed by our Constitution. 
You cannot attack the institution of slavery without attacking 
the institutions of our country." And Calhoun in the Senate 
called a mild petition from the Pennsylvania Friends for the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia (1836) "a foul 
slander on nearly one half the states of the Union." 

The first amendment to the Constitution forbids Congress to 460. John 
make any law abridging '' the right of the people to petition the figji°7the^°'^ 
government for redress of srrievances." Up to the days of the "gag-resoiu- 



abolitionist excitement Congress had respected this amendment House, 1836- 
and received all petitions. But in May, 1836,- the enemies of 
abolition, North and South, united in the following resolution 



1 The American Antislavery Society had been organized by the abolitionists 
at Philadelphia in 1833, and had added 200 branch societies by 1835. Before this 
epoch only the Friends had taken an interest in petitioning Congress for the 
destruction of slavery. 



322 Slavery and the West 

in the House : '' That all petitions . . . relating in any way to the 
subject of slavery or the abolition of slavery, shall, without being 
either printed or referred [to a committee], be laid upon the 
. table, and that no further action shall be held thereon." This 
"gag resolution," as it was called by reason of its intent to throttle 
free discussion, furthered the abolitionist cause more than all 
the published numbers of The Liberator. John Quincy Adams, no 
friend of abolition before,^ answered, when his name was called 
on the vote, " I hold the resolution to be a direct violation of 
the Constitution of the United States, of the rules of this House, 
and of the rights of my constituents." The gag resolution 
passed, however, by a vote of 1 17 to 68, and, in spite of Adams's 
valiant opposition, was renewed in succeeding sessions, and in 
1840 was made a " standing " or permanent rule of the House.^ 

461. Calhoun Meanwhile the Senate, although it did not pass any similar 

thTSave- resolution, rejected the abolitionist petitions so curtly that the 

holders] de- effect on the public was the same as that of the conduct of the 

mands in the ^ 

Senate, 1836 House. In the course of the debates the Southern members, 

led by Calhoun, formulated the full demands of the slave in- 
terests, namely, that the government should protect slavery in 
the Southern states, that the people of the North should cease 
to attack or even discus's the institution, and that there should 
be no agitation for the abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia or the territory of Florida.^ 

462. Attempt Furthermore, the executive department of the government had 
abohtionist been drawn into the abolitionist struggle. The people of the 
Se^maiis""^ South objected to the distribution of abolitionist literature through 
1836-1836 their mails. One night in the summer of 1835 ^ number of 

1 In 1807 he had voted in the Senate against the law to prohibit the slave 
trade, and in 1814, as peace commissioner at Ghent, he had insisted that the 
British pay for the slaves they had stolen in the United States. 

2 It was not till December, 1844, that Adams, after an eight years' fight, during 
•which an attempt was made to censure him publicly, was able to get the gag 
resolution repealed by a vote of 108 to 80. 

3 Arkansas, the only territory of the Louisiana Purchase tract left open to 
slavery after the Missouri Compromise, was admitted as a slave state in 1836. 
This left Florida the only territory in which slavery legally existed.. 



The Gathering Cloud 323 

leading citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, broke into the 
post office, seized a mail sack full of abolitionist documents, and 
publicly burned them. Appeal was made to the Postmaster- 
General, Amos Kendall, himself a slaveholder, to refuse the 
abolitionists the use of the United States mails. Kendall re- 
plied that he had no authority to exclude abolitionist matter 
from the mails, but added that he would force neither the 
Northern postmasters to forward such matter nor the Southern 
postmasters to deliver it. In other words, he signified his will- 
ingness to have his subordinates exclude the documents which 
he himself had no authority to exclude. Probably Kendall was 
encouraged to assume this deplorably inconsistent attitude by 
his knowledge that President Jackson sympathized with the 
South in this matter, and was already preparing to insert in his 
message of 1835 ^^ Congress a recommendation to pass a law 
forbidding ^' under severe penalties the circulation in the Southern 
states, through the mails, of incendiary publications intended to 
instigate the slaves to insurrection." Congress, however, refused 
to interfere, in the interests of slavery, with the regular business 
of the Post-Office Department of the United States. By a law 
of July 2, 1836, it punished with dismissal, fine, and imprison- 
ment any postmaster who intentionally detained mail matter 
from reaching the person to whom it was addressed. 

These events of the years 183 5-1 83 7 in Congress woke the 463. impor- 
people of the land to realization of the tremendous problem years 1835-^ 

they had on their hands.^ The antislavery men of the North 1837 for the 

■' slavery 

drew closer to the abolitionist position when they saw how little question 

chance there was of friendly cooperation with the South for 

the removal of slavery. Deeds of mob violence still further 

inflamed the antislavery spirit. In 1836 the office of The 

1 Our foremost constitutional historian, Professor Burgess, goes so far as to 
write : " It would not be extravagant to say that the whole course of the internal 
history of the United States from 1836 to 1861 was more largely determined by 
the struggle in Congress over the Abolition petitions and the use of the mails 
for the distribution of the Abolition literature than by anything else." — Middle 
Period, p. 274. 



324 



Slavery and the West 



Phila7ithropist, an abolitionist paper published in Cincinnati 
by James G. Birney, a former Alabama planter who had come 
North and been converted to the abolitionist cause, was sacked 
by a mob, and Birney was obliged to flee for his life. The next 
year Elijah Lovejoy, after his printing press had been wrecked 
three times, was deliberately shot by a mob in Alton, Illinois, 
for insisting on publishing an abolitionist paper. 

Although Garrison and his New England followers con- 
demned any participation in politics under a Constitution which 
recognized slavery, the more practical abolitionists of the Middle 
and Western border states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and 
Illinois, formed a political party. In 1838 they elected Joshua 
R. Giddings to Congress, and in the presidential campaign of 
1840 they cast over 7000 votes for James G. Birney.-^ We shall 
see in the next chapter what a great influence this Liberty party 
exercised in the decade 1840-1850. In spite of Garrison's op- 
position to the party, it was nevertheless the natural and logical 
outcome of the abolitionist movement, and the true foundation 
of the new Republican party which twenty years later triumphed 
in the election of Abraham Lincoln, — the man who gave negro 
slavery its death blow. 

The failure of the South to get rid of slavery in the early 
decades of the nineteenth century must be set down to the 
domination of a class of rich, aristocratic planters, who found 
slavery both economically profitable and the basis of a social 
order in which they enjoyed a comfortable and commanding 
position. Their slaves excluded the competition of free labor 
and kept the poorer whites from attaining the industrial devel- 
opment which would have given them a share in the commercial 
wealth and the political power of the South. Calhoun, in a con- 
versation with Horace Binney, a Northern friend, in 1834, 

1 The socialists of to-day offer an analogy to the abolitionists of the middle of 
the century, some of them wishing to keep their ideal " pure " by refraining from 
participation in a government corrupted by capitalism, others seeing the only 
hope of success in entering the political arena and struggling with the other 
parties there. 



The Gathering Cloud 325 

boasted of the superiority of slave labor over free labor in a 
democracy. Of the Northern laborers he said : '' The poor and 
uneducated are increasing. There is no power in representative 
government to suppress them. Their numbers and disorderly 
tempers will make them in the end the enemies of the men of 
property. They have the right to vote, and will finally control 
your elections, invade your houses, and drive you out of doors. 
. . , They will increase till they overturn your institutions. 
Slavery cuts off this evil at its roots. . . . There cannot be a 
durable republic without slavery." ^ 

The moral argument of the abolitionists had less and less 466. The 
weight as this caste system hardened. "By what moral sua- mentpower- 
sion," asked an apologist for slavery in the South, "do you Jaceofeco- 
imagine you can prevail on us to give up a thousand millions nomic inter- 
of dollars in the value of our slaves and a thousand millions 
more in the depreciation of our lands ? " Had the states of the 
South been willing to cooperate with the national government, 
there is little doubt that a plan of gradual emancipation could 
have been found. Other nations, even the states of Spanish 
America, had got rid of slavery without revolution or blood- 
shed, and the example of England, which purchased for £20^ 
000,000 and set free .the slaves in her West Indian colonies in 
1833, was before the eyes of the South and of the world. But 
the humane and moderate sentiment surrendered completely in 
our country to the slaveholders' financial interests. Under the 
provocation of the abolitionists' attacks the legislatures of the 
Southern states, instead of devising plans of emancipation, passed 
harsher and harsher laws for the coercion of the negroes, muzzled 
all expression of opinion, forbade any assembling of the blacks 
for instruction, and made death the penalty for exciting or sup- 
porting any conspiracy for freedom. 

1 This gloomy prediction of Calhoun's was reported in a letter from Mr. 
Binney to Dr. Francis Lieber, January 5, 1861. See C. C. Binney, The Life of 
Horace Binney, p. 313. 



326 Slavery and the West 

REFERENCES 

Slavery in the Colonies: J. B. MacMaster, History of the People of 
the United States, Vol. Ill, pp. 514-528; Vol. IV, pp. 556-569; 
E. B. Greene, P7'ovincial America (American Nation Series), chap. 
xiv; A. B. Hart, A?nerican History told by Contemporaries, Vol. I, Nos. 
86-87; Vol- II» Nos. 42, 102-108; J. A. Doyle, English Colonies in 
Amei-ica, Vol. V, chap, vi ; W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppressio7t of the 
African Slave Trade, chaps, i-iii ; W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social 
History of New England, Vol. II, chap, xii ; Mary S. Locke, Anti- 
slavery in America, i6ig-i8o8 (Radcliffe College Monographs, No. 11). 

The Missouri Compromise : H. Von Holst, Constitutional History of 
the United States, Vol. I, chap, ix ; F. J. Turner, Rise of the A^ew West 
(Am. Nation), chap, x; John Quincy Adams, Memoirs, Vols. IV, V; 
J. A. Woodburn, Historical Significance of the Missouri Compromise, in 
American History Association Report, 1893, pp. 249-298 ; J. W. Burgess, 
The Middle Period, chap, iv ; MacMaster, Vol. IV, chap, xxxix ; Carl 
Schurz, Henry Clay, Vol. I, chap. viii. 

The Abolitionists: Hart, Cvntemporaries, Vol. Ill, Nos. 174-181, 
186; W. P. and F. J. Garrison, Life of William Lloyd Garrison; Mac- 
Master, Vol. VI, chap. Ixi ; Higginson and MacDonald, Histoiy of 
the United States, chap, xix ; J. G. Whittier, in the Atlantic Monthly, 
Vol. XXXIII, pp. 166-172 ; William MacDonald, Select Documents 
of United States History, 1776-1861, Nos. 63-69 ; T. C. Smith, The LibeHy 
and Free-Soil Parties in the NoHhtvest, chaps, ii, iii ; Burgess, chap, xi ; 
J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 18^0, 
Vol. I, pp. 53-75; Booker T. Washington, The Story of the Negro, 
chap, xiv (negro abolitionists). 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. Antislavery Sentiment in the Eighteenth Century : Henry Wilson, 
The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. I, pp. 1-30 ; Thomas Jeffer- 
son, Notes on Virginia; William Birney,/<zw^j G. Bimey, His Life 
and Times, Appendix C ; John Woolman, Considerations on the Keep- 
ing of Negroes ; Hart, Contemporaries, Vol. II, Nos. 102, 103, 106; 
Gaillard Hunt, Life of fames Madison, pp. 70-76. 

2. Slavery in the Constitution of the United States : Wilson, Vol. I, 
pp. 39-56; DuBois, pp. 53-69; Jonathan Elliot, Debates on the 
Adoption of the Federal Constitution, Vol. V ; J. R. Brackett, The 
Status of Slavery, lyy^-iySg (in J. F. Jameson's Essays in Constitutional 
History), pp. 263-311 ; H. V. Ames, Slavery and the Coftstitution. 



The Gathering Cloud 327 

3. The " Gag " Resolutions : Adams, Vol. VIII, pp. 434-481; Vol. 
IX, pp. 267-2S6; Hart, Vol. Ill, No. 184 ; C. H. Peck, The Jacks onian 
Epoch, pp. 273-279, 373-392; J. T. Morse, ]r., John Quincy Adams, 
pp. 243-262 ; JosiAH Quincy, Memoir oj John Quincy Adams, pp. 
251-262; Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation), pp. 256-275. 

4. Abolitionist Literature in the United States Mail : Hart, Vol. Ill, 
No. 180; Slavery and Abolition, pp. 286-288; J. D. Richardson, Mes- 
sages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. Ill, pp. 175 ff . ; Amos Kendall, 
Autobiography, pp. 645 ff. 

5. James G. Birney : William Birney, James G. Bii*ney, His Life 
and Times; Samuel J. May, Recollections of the Antislavery Conflict, pp. 
203-211 ; Hart, Vol. Ill, No. 177 ; Wilson, Vol. I (use index). 



CHAPTER XII 

TEXAS 

Westward Expansion 

One of the chief traits of the American people has been their 
restless activity. The settlers who came to our shores in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came in search of an 
ampler life than they found in the Old World. They wanted 
elbow room. They demanded freedom — freedom from religious 
persecution, social oppression, and commercial restriction. For 
the sake of living untrammeled lives and working out their own 
destinies, they accepted the privations and hardships of the New 
World. Their descendants, increased by new thousands of ad- 
venturous immigrants, tended constantly westward, making 
the extension of our frontier to the Pacific probably the most 
important influence in American history. 
467. The The Westward movement is characterized by successive waves 
th^^west ° of migration. The first great wave, fascinatingly described in 
1763-1783 ex-President Roosevelt's " Winning of the West," followed the ex- 
pulsion of the French from North America in 1 763. Through the 
passes of the Alleghenies, '^ the arteries of the West," a stream of 
pioneers led by Boone, Sevier, Robertson, Harrod, and our other 
early " empire builders," ^ poured into the forest lands of the 
Ohio, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland valleys ; while George 
Rogers Clark, during the American Revolution, won for Virginia 
and the Union the magnificent territory between the Ohio and 
the Great Lakes, extending westward to the Mississippi. 

1" A roughened race, embrowned in the sun, loving the rude woods and the 
crack of the rifle, delicate in nothing but the touch of the trigger, leaving cities 
in their track as if by accident rather than by design. . . . Settled life and wild Hfe 
side by side ; civilization frayed at the edges ; Europe frontiered ! " Woodrow 
Wilson, in T/ie Forum, Vol. XIX, p. 544. 



Texas 329 

A second wave of Westward migration followed the War of 468. succes- 
18 1 2, filling the Indiana and Illinois territories on the north and westward °* 
the Mississippi and Missouri territories to the south, and bring- migration 
ing five new Western states (Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Ala- 
bama, Missouri) into the Union in as many years (181 6-1 821). 
The third and most wonderful era of Westward expansion 
(183 5 -1 8 48) carried our boundary across the Rockies and the 
Sierras to the Pacific Ocean, It is this third period which we 
are to study in the present chapter. The chapter is entitled 
" Texas," because the annexation of that great commonwealth 



An Emigrant Train on the Way to the West 

to the Union, and the disposition of the land that was acquired 
in the war with Mexico which followed the annexation, deter- 
mined the whole policy of our government toward the West 
during the decade 1 840-1 850. 

The path of Westward expansion was never smooth. Besides 469. Eastern 
the distresses and dangers of the wilderness, the pioneer com- Jhrdeveiop*-" 
munities had to contend with opposition from the older states. 
Up to the time of the Missouri Compromise this opposition 
arose from the apprehension of the original states that the 
burden of the defense and the development of the new commu- 
nities would fall upon their shoulders, and from the jealousy of 
the political power which the new communities would wrest 
from them. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, at the time of 



ment of the 
West 



330 



Slavery and the West 



470. Slavery 
and the West 



471. The 
crisis of the 
slavery ques- 
tion comes 
with West- 
ward expan- 
sion 



the formation of the Constitution, wanted some provision in- 
serted to prevent the future commonwealths created out of the 
trans-Allegheny country from enjoying equal power in Congress 
with the thirteen original states. And when the bill to admit 
Louisiana to the Union was proposed in 1 8 1 1 , Josiah Quincy 
of Massachusetts declared on the floor of Congress : " If this 
bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a dis- 
solution of the Union. . . . Do you suppose the people of the 
Northern and Atlantic states will, or ought to, look on with 
patience and see representatives and senators from the Red 
River and the Missouri pouring themselves on this floor, man- 
aging the concerns of a seaboard 1500 miles, at least, from 
their residence ? " 

This narrow and selfish opposition of the East to the expan- 
sion of the West was broken down by the democratic revolution 
of the third decade of the nineteenth century, which put Andrew 
Jackson into the presidential chair. But a still more serious 
complication arose with the debates over the Missouri Compro- 
mise and the abolitionist agitation. Then the question of the 
growth of the West became connected with the question of the 
extension of slavery. After the bitter struggle of the years 
1835-1837 in Congress over the antislavery petitions and the 
use of the United States mails for antislavery propaganda, no 
movement for the acquisition of new territory or the admission 
of new states could arise without immediately starting the strife 
between the friends and the foes of slavery. Senator Benton of 
Missouri likened the slavery question to the plague of frogs 
sent on the Egyptians. "We can see nothing, touch nothing, 
have no measures proposed," he said, " without having this 
pestilence thrust before us." 

It would be impossible to overestimate the importance of 
this connection between Westward expansion and slavery. In 
fact, it was in connection with the Westward movement that the 
struggle over slavery grew fiercer and fiercer until it ended in 
secession and civil war. In other words, the slavery issue came 



Texas 331 

to a crisis not as a struggle between North and South, but as a 
struggle of North and ^o\i\h. for the West. If there had been no 
trans-Mississippi territory to spread into, slavery might have 
continued in the Southern states as an accepted institution, pro- 
tected by the Constitution of the United States, and established 
by long usage, in spite of the agitation of a relatively small 
group of abolitionists in the North. Or if that group had had 
their way, the North and the South might have separated peace- 
ably into a free and a slave republic. But the sentiment of ex- 
pansion, so deeply implanted in the breasts of Northerners and 
Southerners alike, and the glory of carrying the American flag 
to the Pacific Ocean, impelled our fathers to take possession of 
the Western land and trust to future compromises to settle the 
question of freedom or slavery within its borders. The history 
of those compromises we shall trace in a later chapter. First 
we must see how the Western land was won. 

It will be remembered that the treaty of 18 19 with Spain 472. claims 
fixed our western boundary as far north as the forty-second Jg^^Q o^regon 
parallel. We had just concluded (18 18) a treaty with Great 1828 
Britain by which we agreed to share with that power for 
ten years the great Oregon region lying west of the Rocky 
Mountains between 42° and 54° 40' north latitude. The agree- 
ment was fair, for both countries had claims on Oregon, based 
upon exploration and settlement. For the Americans, a Boston 
sea captain named Grey had 'sailed into the mouth of the 
Columbia River in 1792 ; the famous Lewis and Clark expedi- 
tion had traversed the region to the Pacific in 1 804-1 806 ; and 
John Jacob Astor had established the tur post of Astoria near 
the mouth of the Columbia in 181 1. For the English, the 
Hudson Bay Company had established several trading posts 
and ports north of the Columbia River. In 1828, on the 
expiration of the ten years' agreement, some of our Western 
patriots, led by Senator Thomas H, Benton, who realized the 
importance of our extension to the Pacific, urged a settlement 
of the Oregon question which should give the United States full 



332 Slavery and the West 

title to the land at least as far north as the forty-ninth parallel (our 
northern boundary east of the Rockies). But public opinion was 
not yet sufficiently aroused to the value of the region across the 
Rockies. Oregon seemed too far away to bother over in the excit- 
ing days of the Jackson campaign for the presidency ; and the 
agreement of 1818 was renewed for an indefinite period in 1829. 
473, Marcus During the Jacksonian epoch several American travelers and 
labors for explorers made the long overland journey to Oregon, but the 
Oregon, 1835- interest of the people at large in the possession of that distant 
region was due chiefly to the splendid energy and enthusiasm 
of one man, Dr. Marcus Whitman of New York. Whitman was 
sent out by the American Board of Missions to labor for the 
conversion of the Pacific-coast Indians in 1835. The next year 
he returned to the East and took back to Oregon with him a 
little company of helpers, including two women, — his newly 
married wife and the bride of one of his colleagues, — the first 
white women to make the toilsome and dangerous wagon trip 
across the Western prairies and the Rockies. A few years later 
(1842), when there was danger that the American Board would 
discontinue its station in southern Oregon, Whitman made a 
winter's journey of nearly 4000 miles back to the headquarters 
of the Board in Boston to urge the continuance of the work. 
On his return trip to Oregon he was of inestimable service in 
helping conduct a company of several hundred emigrants from 
the Middle West to the Columbia valley. The actual settlement 
of this colony in Oregon constituted the most powerful argu- 
ment in, our claim to the region from that time on. 

While Oregon was thus being opened for American settle- 
ment, a most exciting incident in the great drama of expansion 
was being enacted on our southern borders, in Texas. We 
must again revert to the famous treaty of 1819 with Spain, 
which fixed our southwestern boundary at the Sabine River. 
Two years after the treaty of 18 19 Mexico joined the long list 
of Spanish-American colonies which had established their in- 
dependence of the mother countiy. The government of the new 



Texas 333 

'' Republic of Mexico " was very weak, however, especially in the 
provinces lying at a distance from the capital. Texas (joined 
with Coahuila) formed one of these provinces, and for several 
reasons chafed under the weak but imperious control of Mexico. 

In the first place, since the beginning of the nineteenth cen- 474. Ameri- 
tury Americans ^ had been crossing the Sabine into Texas, un- in°he Mexi- 
til by 1830 there were nearly 20,000 of them in the province. The ^j° p^°^^°*i® 
Americans at first had been welcomed and given large tracts of 
land by the Mexicans, partly in return for the aid they furnished 
the latter in their revolt from Spain. But when the number of 
Americans increased to the point where they threatened to rule 
the province, the Mexican president Bustamante issued an edict 
(1830) forbidding all further immigration from the United States 
into Texas. ^ At the same time the Mexican government sub- 
jected the province of Texas, with its predominating Protestant 
religion, its traditions of representative government, and its free- 
dom of speech and press, to the Roman Catholic Spanish 
officials of the smaller province of Coahuila. Evidently the intent 
of the Mexican government was to put an end to American in- 
fluence in Texas. ' 

After petitioning Mexico for a separation from Coahuila 475. Texas 
(1833), and in reply having a detachment of Mexican troops sent pendencefrom 
into their province to maintain order, and a Mexican warship sent ^fp^^J^^ s 5 
to their coast to threaten their ports, the Texans, on the second 

1 The term " American," of course, in its literal sense means an inhabitant 
or citizen of America — North, South, or Central. But, as we have no single word 
to denote an inhabitant or citizen of the United States, we quite comnrionly use 
the term " American " for that purpose, calling the other " Americans " Cana- 
dians, Mexicans, Brazilians, etc. 

2 Alexis de Tocqueville, our most distinguished foreign critic in the first half 
of the nineteenth century, wrote shortly after 1830: "In the course of the 
last few years, the Anglo-Americans have penetrated into this province [Texas], 
which is still thinly peopled.. They purchase land, they produce the commodities 
of the country, and supplant the original population. It may be easily foreseen 
that if Mexico takes no step to check this change, the province of Texas will 
soon cease to belong to her" (Democracy in America, Vol. I, p. 448). In a 
hundred years Spain had brought less than 3000 white colonists to Texas, while 
in the single decade 1817-1827, about 12,000 Americans crossed the borders 
into the province. 



334 



Slavery and the West 



of March, 1836, declared their independence, and drove the 
Mexican troops across their border. Santa Anna, the new- 
Mexican president, a man of perfidious and cruel character, led 
an army of 6000 troops in person to punish the rebellious prov- 
ince of Texas. His march was marked with horrible atrocities. 
At the Alamo, a mission building in San Antonio, a garrison of 
166 Texans was absolutely exterminated, even to the sick in 
the hospital ward; and a little further on, at La Bahia, the 
defenders were massacred in cold blood after their surrender. 
Santa Anna with some 1500 troops was met at the San Jacinto 




The Convent and Grounds of the Alamo 



476. The 
republic of 
Texas 



River (April 21, 1836) by a force of about 750 Texan volun- 
teers under General Sam Houston, a veteran of the War of 
181 2, and an ex-governor of Tennessee. The Mexican army 
was utterly routed and Santa Anna himself fell into Houston's 
hands as a prisoner of war. 

The independence of Texas was won. A republic was immedi- 
ately set up with Houston as president, and a constitution was 
adopted patterned after those of the American commonwealths. 
Slavery was legitimized in the new republic, but the importation 
of slaves from any place except the United States was forbid- 
den. Some 50,000 out of the 68,000 inhabitants of Texas 
were Americans, and the sentiment of President Houston, the 



Texas 



335 



legislature, and the people at large was overwhelmingly in favor 
of annexation to the United States. 

The administration at Washington was also in favor of the 
annexation of Texas, and had been ever since Mexico had secured 
its independence from Spain. In 1827 President John Quincy 
Adams had offered Mexico $1,000,000 for Texas; and Presi- 
dent Jackson had twice tried to purchase the province (1829, 
1835), raising Adams's offer to $5,000,000. In fact, some of 

Jackson's opponents asserted 
that when Mexico, in 1835, 
refused his last offer of 
$5,000,000 he secretly urged 
his old friend Houston to 
precipitate the revolution of 
the following year, by which 
Texas won its independence. 
However, there is little 
probability that this charge 
was true, for Jackson refused 
to conclude a treaty of annex- 
ation with Texas, even after 
both Houses of Congress had 
recognized the independence 

Sam Houston, First President of the ^f the province by large ma- 
Republic of Texas jorities. We were at peace 
with Mexico, though on bad 
terms with her on account of claims of damages to American 
property in Texas and to American commerce in the Gulf. 
Mexico still claimed Texas as a dependency, and although there 
was apparently little chance of her recovering the province, the 
revolt was still too recent to make the Texan republic an 
assured fact. Under these circumstances, for the United States 
to take Texas without the consent of Mexico would have been 
a breach of the law of nations, and would probably have 
brought on war between the two countries. 




478. Jackson 
refuses to 
anger Mexico 
by the an- 
nexation of 
Texas, 1836 



336 Slavery and the West 

479. Van When Van Buren entered the White House in March, 1837, 
toannexa-^ whatever hope there was of the speedy annexation of Texas 
tion, 1837-1841 vanished. The abolitionist struggle in Congress was at its height. 

The moment was most inauspicious for the attempt to add the 
immense slave area of Texas to the Union. Besides, Van Buren 
was a New Yorker, and had little desire for extending the do- 
main of slavery. He refused to consider any proposition for 
the annexation of Texas, and even came to an agreement with 
Mexico (which that country promptly broke) for the settlement 
of the American claims. So the whole matter slumbered through 
Van Buren's administration, and played no part at all in the 
turbulent election of 1840, in which the new Whig party over- 
threw the Jackson machine and took revenge on Van Buren 
for the official corruption and financial demoralization for which 
they believed his patron and predecessor was responsible. 

The " Reoccupation " of Oregon and the 

'' Re ANNEXATION " OF TeXAS 

480. Presi- The triumph of the Whigs in 1840 was short-lived. Presi- 
and the Whigs dent Harrison, the old hero of Tippecanoe, died a month after 

his inauguration, and Vice President Tyler succeeded to his 
place. Tyler was a Virginian and a Democrat. He had been 
put on the Whig ticket with Harrison in order to win votes in 
the South. The only bond of union between him and men like 
Adams, Clay, Harrison, and Webster was his enmity for Andrew 
Jackson, which had been strong enough to drive him into the 
Whig party. On the great questions of public policy, such as a 
strong central government, internal improvements, the tariff, 
and the Bank of the United States, he was opposed to the 
Whig leaders ; and being a man of independent judgment and 
strong will, he had no intention of submitting to the dictation 
of Henry Clay.^ 

1 We have already seen (p. 296) why Clay was not an available candidate for 
the presidency in 1840. Still, as the acknowledged leader of the Whig party, he 
expected to control the administration and had already quarreled with Harrison. 



Texas 337 

When the Whig Congress passed a bill for the rechartering 481. Tyler 
of the National Bank in the summer of 1841, Tyler vetoed it; Ban°k\iii^ 

and even after Cons^ress had modified the bill in a way that the (^841), and is 

■' read out of the 

leaders thought would meet the President's views, Tyler still re- Whig party 

fused his consent. As the Whigs did not have the necessary 

two-thirds majority in Congress to override the President's veto, 

the bill was lost, and with it the dearest project of the Whig 

leaders. For this " insubordination " Tyler was read out of the 

Whig party, and every member of his cabinet resigned except 

Daniel Webster, who was in the midst of delicate negotiations 

with Lord Ashburton over the boundary between Maine and 

Canada. 

With the cabinet reorganized, and the Whigs of Harrison's 482. Daniel 

choice replaced by men of Tyler's views, the Southern members J^r^g^^Jr^o^J^'iie 

of Congress bes^an to revive the question of the annexation of Cabinet, 1842; 

. the annexa- 

Texas, making no effort to conceal the fact that they wanted tion policy is 

more territory for the extension of slavery. But while Daniel 
Webster was Secretary of State, there was little hope of push- 
ing the annexation policy. Webster was a strong antislavery 
Whig, who had put himself on record against the acquisition of 
Texas in a great speech made in New York City, on his way 
home from the Congressional session of 1836-1837. "Texas is 
likely to be a slaveholding country," he said, ''and I frankly 
avow my entire unwillingness to do anything that shall extend 
the slavery of the African race on this continent, or add other 
slaveholding states to the Union. When I say I regard slavery 
as a great moral, social, and political evil, I only use language 
which has been adopted by distinguished men, themselves citi- 
zens of slaveholding states.-^ ... I shall do nothing, therefore, 
to favor or encourage its further extension." But a few months 
after the Webster-Ashburton treaty of 1842 was concluded, 
Webster was replaced by a Secretary of State (Upshur, of Vir- 
ginia) whose views were favorable to the annexation policy. 

1 Unfortunately, as we have seen (pp. 321-325), such language was rapidly 
becoming discredited in the South at the very time when Webster was speaking. 



338 



Slavery and the West 



It was just at this time that Marcus Whitman made his 
famous horseback journey across the continent to save the mis- 
sion stations in Oregon. The popular interest in that distant 
region, which followed the publication of Whitman's pamphlets 
and his successful colonization of the Columbia valley, furnished 
the annexationists with fine political capital. By combining the 
demand for Oregon with the demand for Texas they could 
appeal to the people of the United States on a platform which 
emphasized the expansion of American territory rather than the 
extension of the area of slavery. With Oregon they might win 
the Northern expansionists who were opposed to annexing Texas 
on account of slavery. Thus Oregon was used as a makeweight 
for Texas. 

As the year 1843 passed, the policy of both Great Britain 
and Mexico strengthened the expansionist sentiment in the 
United States. The British ministry curtly rejected the offer of 
our government to divide Oregon by running the boundary line 
of 49° north latitude to the Pacific ; and Mexico, besides break- 
ing the agreement made with Van Buren for the adjustment of 
American claims, notified our State Department that any move 
to annex Texas would be regarded as an act of war. Although 
we were a strong nation and Mexico a weak one, there were 
many Americans who felt that we had borne long enough with 
the violence and perfidy of our Southern neighbor. 

Moreover, there were unmistakable signs that Great Britain 
was using her influence to keep us out of Texas. She built and 
even officered Mexican war steamers, which ravaged the Texan 
coast. Her ships were hovering off the coast of California 
(which was part of Mexico), ready to aid the establishment 
there of English colonies authorized by Mexico, ''to keep out 
the Americans." Moreover, Mexico owed about $50,000,000 
to British capitalists, for which her lands to the north and west 
of the Rio Grande were mortgaged. An independent state of 
Texas under British protection would furnish England a market 
for her cotton manufactures, unhampered by the tariff of the 



Texas 339 

United States. Our minister to Paris wrote to the Secretary 
of State in 1845, "There is scarcely any sacrifice England would 
not make to prevent Texas from coming into our possession." 

When, therefore, the cabinet office of Secretary of State was 486. cai- 
again made vacant, by the tragic death of Mr. Upshur ^February, atlon' treat^y " 
1844), President Tyler appointed John C. Calhoun, who was rejected, 
an ardent annexationist, for the express purpose of negotiating 
a treaty securing Texas. Calhoun speedily concluded the treaty, 
and the President sent it to the Senate, April 22, 1844. But 
the Senate, on June 8, refused by a large majority to ratify it. 
Besides the strong antislavery men of the North, many Southern- 
ers voted against the treaty for various reasons : because Calhoun 
had overstepped his powers in sending men and ships to pro- 
tect Texas from Mexican interference while the treaty was under 
discussion ; because they saw in it a bid on his part for the 
presidency ; because they thought that he deliberately misrepre- 
sented Great Britain's attitude in order to hasten annexation; 
because there were many speculators in Texan lands trying to 
influence senators in the lobbies of Congress to vote for the 
treaty ; because they were not ready to invite war with Mexico ; 
because they doubted the power of the President and Senate 
to annex an independent foreign state by treaty. 

While Calhoun's treaty was being discussed in the Senate, 487. The na- 
the Whig and Democratic conventions met to select their candi- ventions of 
dates for the presidential campaign. The Wliigs, rejoicing that ^^'♦'^ 
the day of Tyler's retirement was at hand, unanimously 
nominated Henry Clay. On the subject of expansion their plat- 
form was silent. They relied entirely on the record and the 
popularity of their candidate. In the Democratic convention 
the friends of annexation carried the day after a hard battle. 
Van Buren was rejected, and James K. Polk of Tennessee was 
nominated on the eighth ballot. 

1 He was killed by the explosion of a gun on the United States warship 
Princeton., which a party of government officials were visiting as she lay at 
anchor in the Potomac, a little below Washington. 



340 



Slavery and the West 



Polk was an ardent annexationist. He had been a member 
of Congress from 1825 to 1839, ai^d Speaker of the House 
during the stormy days of the abolitionist debates. In 1839 he 
was elected governor of Tennessee. Although by no means 
an obscure man, Polk had not been regarded as a presidential 
possibility before the convention met. He is the first example 
of the " dark horse " Mn the national convention ; and it is a 
significant fact that from this time to the choice of Abraham 
Lincoln in i860, the men of first rank (like Clay, Calhoun, 
Webster, and Douglas) were passed over for a more "available," 
that is, a compromise, candidate. It is the most striking proof 
of the influence of the slavery question on our politics ; for no 
other issue since the establishment of our government had been 
strong enough to keep from the highest offices the statesmen 
of conspicuous genius. 

The Democrats went into the campaign of 1844 with a frank 
appeal to the expansionist sentiment of the country. Their plat- 
form was the reoccupation of Oregon and the reannexation of 
Texas. The prefix re in this confident declaration implied that 
Oregon was already ours by discovery, settlement, and treaty ; 
and that Texas had been really purchased with Louisiana in 1803 
but had been weakly surrendered to Spain in the treaty of 18 19. 

Three days before the Whig convention met, Henry Clay 
had made public a letter declaring against the annexation of 
Texas as likely to bring on war with Mexico and to reopen the 
painful subject of slavery. After his nomination, however, he 
tried to win the support of the South and at the same time 
hold the support of the antislavery men of the North. In a 
second letter, published in August, he said he should like to 
see Texas annexed if it could be accomplished '^ without dis- 
honor, without war, with the common consent of the nation, 
and on just and fair terms," adding that " the subject of slavery 



1 A term borrowed from the language of the race track to denote a horse of 
whose qualities and speed nothing is known ; then used in politics of an obscure 
candidate who " comes up from behind " and wins the race. 



Texas 341 

ought not to affect the question one way or the other." Dis- 
satisfied with Clay's " straddle " on the slavery issue in Texas, 
enough Whigs in New York and Michigan cast their votes for 
the abolitionist James C. Birney (who was again the candidate 
of the Liberty party) to give those two states, and therewith 
the election, to Polk. 

Tyler interpreted the election of Polk as the indorsement by 491. Texas 
the American people of the policy of the immediate annexation ^o'int^esoiu- 

of Texas and Ores^on. He therefore, at the opening of his last ^^°° °^ ^<^°- 
^ ' r fc> gress, March 

Congress (December, 1844), sent all the papers relative to the i, 1845 
Calhoun treaty to the House of Representatives, and suggested 
that Congress might admit Texas without any treaty, under the 
clause of the Constitution which gives it the right to " admit 
new states into this Union." In February, 1845, ^^th branches 
of Congress, acting on Tyler's recommendation, passed resolu- 
tions in favor of annexing Texas, the House by a vote of 132 
to 76, the Senate by the close vote of 27 to 25. President 
Tyler signed the bill on the first of March, three days before 
his retirement from office. 

The people of Texas welcomed the resolutions of Congress 492. The 
with a rejoicing almost as tumultuous as that which had greeted xexa?^^^ °^ 
the news of the victory of San Jacinto. Late in the year 1845 
the republic of Texas became a state of the Union on gener- 
ous terms. She left to the United States government the adjust- 
ment of her boundaries with Mexico ; handed over to the United 
States her ports and harbors as well as her fortifications and 
arsenals ; agreed to consider the proposition of the division of 
her territory into five states if Congress so wished ; and agreed 
to the prohibition of slavery north of the Missouri Compromise 
line of 36° 30'. 

Texas being safely in the Union, the new President began to 493. "Fifty- 
redeem his campaign pledge for the " reoccupation " of Oregon, flight ""^ ^ 
In his first message to Congress (December, 1845) he asserted 
the claims of the United States to the whole of the Oregon 
region from the Spanish-Mexican boundary on the south (42°) 



342 Slavery and tJie West 

to the Russian boundary on the north (54° 40'). Great Britain 
must retire from the whole of Oregon, back to the Hudson 
Bay territory. " Fifty-four forty or fight " was the popular war- 
cry in which *the victorious Democrats voiced their preposterous 
claims to the whole of Oregon. 
494. Settle- However, as Mexico began to make preparations for carry- 
Oregon bound- i^g out her threats of war, the administration at Washington 
^8^6 ^"°^' grcw more moderate in its claims to Oregon. Neither Polk nor 
Congress had any intention, at such a crisis, of going to war 
with England over a difference of five degrees of latitude on 
our northwestern boundary. So, after a rather amusing cam- 
paign of correspondence, in which the President and the Senate 
each tried to throw on the other the responsibility of deserting 
the blustering platform of " Fifty-four forty or fight," a treaty 
was made with Great Britain (June, 1846) continuing the par- 
allel of 49°, from the Rockies to the Pacific, as the northern 
boundary of the United States. 



The Mexican War 

495. The The annexation of Texas was a perfectly fair transaction, 
legality of the „. . ,. r r^ -r ■ - r^ ^ 
annexation of -t'or nine years, since the victory of San Jacinto m 1836, 

Texas Texas had been an independent republic, whose reconquest 

Mexico had not the slightest chance of effecting. In fact, at 

the very moment of annexation, the Mexican government, 

under the guidance of England, had agreed to recognize the 

independence of Texas, on condition that the republic should 

not join itself to the United States. We were not taking 

Mexican territory, then, in annexing Texas ; and the Mexican 

government was violating the law of nations when it threatened 

the United States with war, and actually massed its troops on 

the Texan border. 

496. Polk Texas had come into the Union claiming the Rio Grande as 
attempts to . 1 1 t^ T 

negotiate her southern and western boundary. By the terms of annexa- 

with Mexico ^-Qj^ ^ boundary disputes with Mexico were referred by Texas 



Texas 



343 



to the government of the United States. President Polk, accord- 
ingly, sent John Slidell of Louisiana to Mexico in the autumn 
of 1845 to adjust any differences over the Texan claims. But 
though Slidell labored for months to get a hearing, two succes- 
sive presidents of revolution-torn Mexico refused to recognize 
him, and he was dismissed from the country in August, 1846. 

The massing of 497. General 




Mexican 
on the 



Taylor at- 
troops tacked on the 



Taylor's march 1846-1847 
Scott's march 1847 
Kearney's march 1846 
Doniphan's march 1846-1847^^^^4+ 
Frdmont's route 1846 



The Campaigns of the Mexican War 



south "^^""^'^l^l^ 

April, 1846 

bank of the Rio 
Grande, coupled 
with the refusal 
of the Mexican 
government to re- 
ceive Slidell, led 
President Polk 
to order General 
Zachary Taylor, 
the commander 
of our troops in 
Texas, to move 
to the borders. 
Taylor marched 
to the Rio Grande 
and fortified a 
position on the 
northern bank. 



The Mexican and the American troops were thus facing each 
other across the river. When Taylor refused to retreat to the 
Nueces, the Mexican commander crossed the Rio Grande, am- 
bushed a scouting force of 63 Americans, and killed or wounded 
16 of them (April 24, 1846). 

When the news of this attack reached Washington early in 498. The 
May, Polk sent a special message to Congress, concluding with accep^s^^^^^^ 
these words : '' We have tried every effort at reconciliation. . 



war 
with Mexico 



344 



Slavery mid the West 



But now, after reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the 
boundary of the United States [the Rio Grande], has invaded 
our territory and shed American blood on American soil. She 
has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and that the 
two nations are at war. A war exists, and, notwithstanding 
all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself. 
We are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriot- 
ism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the 
interests of our country." The House and the Senate, by very 
large majorities (174 to 14, and 40 to 2), voted 50,000 men and 
$10,000,000 for the prosecution of the war. 

Meanwhile, General Taylor had driven the Mexicans back to 
the south bank of the Rio Grande in the batdes of Palo Alto 
and Resaca de la Palma. Six days after the vote of Congress 
sanctioning the war, he crossed the Rio Grande and occupied 
the Mexican frontier town of Matamoros, whence he proceeded 
during the summer and autumn of 1846 to capture the capitals 
of three of the Mexican provinces. 

As soon as hostilities began. Commodore Sloat, in command 
of our squadron in the Pacific, was ordered to seize California, 
and General Kearny, who was at Fort Leavenworth (Kansas), 
was sent to invade New Mexico. The occupation of California 
was practically undisputed. Mexico had only the faintest 
shadow of authority in the province, and the 6000 white in- 
habitants made no objection to seeing the flag of the United 
States raised over their forts. 

Kearny started with 1800 men from Fort Leavenworth in 
June, and on the eighteenth of August defeated the force of 
4000 Mexicans and Indians which disputed his occupation of 
Santa Fe. After garrisoning this important post he detached 
Colonel Doniphan with 850 men to march through the northern 
provinces of Mexico and effect a juncture with General Taylor 
at Monterey, while he himself with only 100 men continued 
his long journey of 1500 miles to San Diego, California, where 
he joined Sloat's successor, Stockton. 



Texas 345 

After these decided victories and uninterrupted marches of 502. Mexico 
Taylor, Kearny, Sloat, Stockton, and Doniphan, the Mexican makepeace 
government was offered a fair chance to treat for peace, which '^46 
it refused. Then President Polk decided, with the unanimous 
consent of his cabinet, to strike at the heart of Mexico. General 
Winfield Scott, a hero of the War of 18 12, was put in command 
of an army of about 12,000 men, to land at Vera Cruz and 
fight his way up the mountains to the capital city of Mexico. 

Santa Anna, who, by the rapid shift of revolutions, was again 503. Taylor's 
dictator in Mexico, heard of this plan to attack the capital, and BuenZvista 
hastened north with 20,000 troops to surprise and destroy 
Taylor's army before Scott should have time to take Vera 
Cruz. But Taylor, with an army one fourth the size of Santa 
Anna's, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Mexicans at Buena 
Vista (February 23, 1847), securing the Calif ornian and New 
Mexican conquests, and driving Santa Anna back to defend 
the city of Mexico. 

Scott took Vera Cruz in March, and worked his way slowly 504. General 
but surely, against forces always superior to his own, up to the thrcitv'?/ 
very gates of Mexico (August, 1847). Here he paused, by the Mexico, sep- 
President's orders, to allow the Mexicans another chance to 1847 
accept the terms of peace which the United States offered, — 
the cession by Mexico of New Mexico and California in return 
for a large payment of money. The Mexican commissioners, 
however, insisted on having both banks of the Rio Grande and 
all of California up to the neighborhood of San Francisco, 
besides receiving damages for injuries inflicted by the American 
troops in their invasions. These claims were preposterous, 
coming from a conquered country, and there was nothing left 
for Scott to do but to resume military operations. Santa Anna 
defended the capital with a force of 30,000 men, but the 
Mexicans were no match for the American soldiers. Scott 
stormed the heights of Chapultepec and carried the gates of the 
city on the thirteenth of September, and on the next day entered 
the Mexican capital in triumph. Resistance was at an end. 



346 



Slavery and the West 



505. Polk's From the beginning of the war Polk had been negotiating 
fo?t?totecure for peace. He had kept Slidell in Mexico long after the opening 
a peace, 1846- ^^ hostilities, and had sent Nicholas Trist as special peace com- 
missioner to join Scott's army at Vera Cruz and to offer Mexico 
terms of peace at the earliest possible moment. He had allowed 
Santa Anna to return to Mexico from his exile in Cuba in the 
summer of 1846, because that wily and treacherous dictator 
held out false promises of effecting a reconciliation between 




Winfield Scott Zachary Taylor 

The Heroes of the Mexican War 

Mexico and the United States. He had asked Congress for an 
appropriation of $2,000,000 for peace negotiations when General 
Taylor was still near the Rio Grande, ten days before General 
Kearny had taken Santa Fe and the province of New Mexico, 
and before General Scott's campaign had been thought of. 
Polk's political opponents found it easy to attribute his desire 
to end the war — or to ''conquer a peace," as he himself 
phrased it — to jealousy of too complete a victory of Generals 
Taylor and Scott, both of whom were Whigs. But the perusal 



Texas 347 

of the careful diary which Polk has left us gives the impression ■ 
of a sincere desire on the part of the administration to deal 
justly and even kindly with Mexico. 

When the Mexican commissioners made advances for peace 506. The 
at the beginning of the year 1848, they were given terms ouadaiupe- 
almost as liberal as those offered them before Scott had stormed Hidalgo 
and occupied their capital. By the treaty concluded at Guada- 
lupe-Hidalgo, February 2, 1848, Mexico was required to cede 
California and New Mexico to the United States and to recog- 
nize the Rio Grande as the southern and western boundary of 
Texas. In return, the United States paid Mexico $15,000,000 
cash, and assumed some $3,250,000 more in claims of Amer- 
ican citizens, which Mexico had agreed by the convention of 
1840 to pay, but had later repudiated. Considering the facts 
that California was scarcely under Mexican control at all, and 
might have been taken at any moment by Great Britain, 
France, or Russia; that New Mexico was still the almost 
undisturbed home of Indian tribes ; that the land from the 
Nueces to the Rio Grande was almost a desert ^ ; and that the 
American troops were in possession of the Mexican capital, the 
terms offered Mexico were very generous. Polk was urged by 
many to annex the whole country of Mexico to the United 
States, but he refused to consider such a proposal. 

The Mexican War has generally been condemned by Amer- 507. The jus- 
ican historians as ''the foulest blot on our national honor," a Mexican war 
war forced upon Mexico by slaveholders greedy for new ter- 
ritory, a perfect illustration of La Fontaine's fable of the wolf 
picking a quarrel with the lamb solely for an excuse to devour 
him. War is a horrid thing at best, and must some day be 
relegated by civilized nations to the limbo of barbarism along 
with human slavery, the torture chamber, and the stake. 

1 Ulysses S. Grant, later the greatest Union general in the Civil War, was in 
Taylor's army on its march to the Rio Grande in 1846. Describing this march 
in his "Memoirs," he says (Vol. I, p. 48) : " No inhabitants were found until 
about thirty miles from San Antonio ; some were living underground for fear of 
the Indians." 



348 Slavery and the West 

But so far as war can be the just means of settling any differ- 
ences between nations, the war of 1846- 1848 with Mexico was 
eminently just. That nation had insulted our flag, plundered 
our commerce, imprisoned our citizens, lied to our represent- 
atives, and spurned our envoys. As early as 1837 President 
Jackson said that Mexico's offenses '' would justify in the eyes 
of all nations immediate war." To be sure we were a strong 
nation and Mexico a weak one. But weakness should not give 
immunity to continued and open insolence. We had a right 
to annex Texas after that republic had maintained its inde- 
pendence for nine years ; yet Mexico made annexation a cause 
of war. We were willing to discuss the boundaries of Texas 
with Mexico ; but our accredited envoy was rejected by two 
successive Mexican presidents, who were afraid to oppose the 
war spirit of their country. We even refrained from taking 
Texas into the Union until Great Britain had interfered so far 
as to persuade Mexico to offer Texas her independence if she 
would refuse to join the United States. 
508. The If there was anything disgraceful in the expansionist pro- 

of the annex- gram of the decade 1 840-1 850, it was not the Mexican War but 
ation of Texas ^^ annexation of Texas. The position of the abolitionists on 
this question was clear and logical. They condemned the an- 
nexation of Texas as a wicked extension of the slavery area, 
notwithstanding all arguments about " fulfilling our manifest 
destiny " or " attaining our natural boundaries." To annex 
Texas might be legally right, they said, but it was morally 
wrong. Daniel Webster expressed the sound view of the ques- 
tion in his speech of 1837 in New York City, which we have 
noticed on a preceding page (see p. 337) ; and James Russell 
Lowell, in his magnificent poem "The Present Crisis" (1844), 
warned the annexationists that " They enslave their chil- 
dren's children who make compromise with sin." We certainly 
assumed a great moral responsibility when we annexed Texas. 
However, it was not to Mexico that we were answerable, but 
to the enlightened conscience of the nation. 



Texas 349 

With our acquisition of the Oregon territory to the forty-ninth 509. compie- 
parallel by the treaty of 1846 with Great Britain, and the program of 
cession of California and New Mexico by the treaty of Guada- expansion 
lupe-Hidalgo in 1848, the boundaries of the United States 
reached practically their present limits.-^ The work of westward 
extension was done. Expansion, the watchword of the decade 
1 840-1 850, was dropped from our vocabulary for fifty years, 
and the immense energies of the nation were directed toward 
finding a plan on which the new territory could be organized 
in harmony with the conflicting interests of the free and slave 
sections of our country. 

REFERENCES 

Westward Expansion : G. P. Garrison, Westward Extension (Ameri- 
can Nation Series), chaps, i, ii,vi,vii; Y.].T\i^^Y.^,Rise of the New West 
(Am. Nation), chaps, v-viii ; E. E. Sparks, The Expansion of the 
America7i People, chap, xxv ; Ellen Semple, American Histo7y and its 
Geographical Conditions, chaps, x-xii ; Francis Parkman, The Oregon 
Trail, chaps, xix-xxi; J. W. Burgess, The Middle Period, chaps, xiii, 
xiv; J. B. MacMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. 
V, chap. Hii ; Vol. VI, chap. Ix ; G. P. Garrison, The First Stage of the 
Movement for the Annexation of Texas {American Historical Reviezv, 
Vol. X, pp. 72-96). 

The " Reoccupation " of Oregon and the " Reannexation " of Texas: 
Sparks, chaps, xxv-xxvii ; Burgess, chap, xv ; L. G. Tyler, Letters 
and Times of the Tylers, Vol. II, chaps, ix-xii, xv; William Mac- 
Donald, Select Documents of United States History, lyyb-iSbi, No. 71 ; 
A. B. Hart, American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. Ill, Nos. 
185-189; H. von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States, 
Vol. II, chaps, vi, vii; Vol. Ill, chaps, iii-viii, yixii', John C. Calhoun, 
chap, viii; Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. I, chap, xii; 
G. P. Garrison, Texas, chaps, x-xx; Westward Extetision, chaps, viii- 
xi ; J. W. Foster, A Century of American Diplomacy, chap. viii. 

The Mexican War: Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 8-14; MacDonald, Nos. 
72-74, 76; Burgess, chap, xvi; Greeley, Vol. I, chap, xiv; Von 

lA small strip south of the Gila River (southern Arizona) was bought from 
Mexico, through Mr. Gadsden, in 1853, for ^10,000,000. The large sum paid for 
the Gadsden Purchase has been called by the critics of the Mexican War 
" conscience money " paid to Mexico for the provinces of which we " robbed " her. 



3 so Slavery and the West 

HoLST, Calhoun, chap, ix; Cotistitutional History, Vol. Ill, chaps, viii- 
xii ; Garrison, Westward Extension, chaps, xiii-xv ; Texas, chaps, xxi- 
xxii ; James Schouler, History of the United States, Vol. V, chap, 
xviii; Pixsident Polk's Administration [Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 
LXXVI, pp. 371-380) ; U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, Vol. I, chaps, 
iii-xiii; Charles H. Owen, The Justice of the Mexican War; E. G. 
Bourne, The United States and Mexico, 184^-1848 {American His- 
torical Review, Vol. V, pp. 491-502) ; J. S. Reeves, The Treaty of 
Guadalupe-Hidalgo {American Historical Review, Vol. X, pp. 309-324). 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Legend of Marcus Whitman: E. G. Bourne, The Legend of 
Marcus Whitman {American Historical Review, Vol. VI, pp. 276-300) ; 
William Barrows, Oregon, pp. 160-254; Schouler, Vol. IV, pp. 
504-514. 

2. American Pioneers in Texas : H. Addington Bruce, The Romance 
of American Expansion, pp. 78-105; Garrison, Texas, pp. 137-169; 
Hart, Vol. Ill, No. 185; MacMaster, Vol. VI, pp. 251-266; Henry 
Bruce, Samuel Housto7t, pp. 64-156; Sarah B. Elliott, Samuel 
Houston, pp. 31-72. 

3. The Conquest of California : Sparks, pp. 324-335 ; Josiah Royce, 
California, pp. 48-150; Garrison, Westward Extension, pp. 230-243; 
John Bidwell, Fremont and the Cottquest of California {The Century, 
Vol. XIX, pp. 518-525). 

4. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty : MacDonald, No. 70 (for text) ; 
G. T. Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, Vol. II, pp. 94-107, 130-172; 
H. C. Lodge, Datiiel Webster, pp. 241-263; Tyler, Vol. II, pp. 216- 
243 ; T. H. Benton, Thirty Years' View, Vol. II, pp. 420-452 ; 
Schouler, Vol. IV, pp. 403-406; Jared Sparks,, The Webster- 
Ashburton Treaty {The North Americati Review, Vol. LVI, pp. 452 ff.); 
Foster, pp. 281-286. 

5. Henry Clay's Letter of 1844 on the Admission of Texas: Hart, 
Vol. Ill, No. 187; Carl Schurz, Henry Clay, Vol. II, pp. 242-268; 
Garrison, Westward Extension, pp. 135-140; Edward Stanwood, 
History of the Presidency, pp. 209-225. 



-120° „■- .. 




Texas (1845) 
Oregon (184(;) 
Mexican Cession (1848) 
Gadsden Purchase (1853) 



Original Area of U.S. 827,844" 

Area of Louisiana Purchase 875,025 " 



CHAPTER XIII -_^. 

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 

The New Territory 

An area larger than the original territory ceded to the United 510. The new 

/- , TTT r T 1 J lands in the 

States by Great Britain at the close of the War of Independence ^gst 

in 1783, and larger than the vast Louisiana region purchased 
from Napoleon in 1803, was added to the United States be- 
tween 1845 and 1848 by the annexation of Texas, the Oregon 
treaty, and the Mexican cession of California and New Mexico.^ 
The land varied in value. Between the rich cotton areas of 
Texas and the smiling valleys of California were the arid plateaus 
and majestic canons of the Rockies. In Oregon fine timber 
and farm lands were awaiting the settler. The sudden acqui- 
sition of the Pacific coast, in an unbroken line of more than a 
thousand miles from Puget Sound to San Diego, opened our 
view upon the great western ocean and made us neighbors of 
China and Japan. 

The new region, although sparsely populated by white men, 511. John c. 

. , 1 r .1 Fremont, 

was Still not entirely unknown. Ever since the clays ot tne ,, ^^e Path- 
Lewis and Clark expedition there had been adventurous ex- fi^*^®^" 
plorers beating into wagon roads the Indian trails to Oregon, 
California, and Santa F^, and reporting to the government 
at Washington what rivers and mountains, what rocks and soils 
and plants and peoples they found on their journeys. The most 

1 Area of U. S. before 1845 Additions, 1845-1848 

Sq. miles Sq. miles 

Original area, 1783 . (about) 830,000 Texas, 1845 • • • (about) 390,000 

Louisiana Purchase, 1803 " 875,000 Oregon, 1846 . . . . 290,000 

Florida Purchase, 1S19 " 65,000 Mexican Cession, 1848 520,ooo 

1,770,000 1,200,000 



Wilmot Pro 
viso, 1846 



352 S!ii:'c-rv irm/ t/ic- JJVst 

noicd o( those Western explorers was jolin C\ l"'reniont, " the 
ratlilinder," who iiKule l\>iir woiulerful expeditions to (Oregon 
and California in the \ears iS.jj iS.jS, and even disobeyed the 
restraining orders of the i;overnnient in his enthusiasm for plant- 
ini;- the Anieriean tlaj;- on the shores o( the laeitie (see niaj^ 
opp. \\ ^^^0)^ lie was in California in 1846, antl his little "army " 
eooperateil with Sloat and Stoekt(>n in oeeup\ini;" the eountrv. 
512. Tho Ivven before the Mexiean War was over, it was evident that 

the United States would demand the eession of California and 
New Mcxieo in its terms c^f peaee. It was exitlent also that the 
great question in the aecjuisition and t>rg"ani/aticMi of the new 
territory woukl he the status o{ slavery in it. (>n the very dav 
the bill asking tor an appropriation to meet the expenses of the 
l^eaee negotiations was introdueed into the 1 louse, David Wilmot 
o( Pennsylvania offered an amendment providing that " neither 
slavery nor involunlar\- servitude . . . slunild ever exist /// ir//v 
piXfi " o{ any territory aequired from the republie of "Mexieo. 
The Wilmi^t Proviso was earned in the House, but defeated in 
the Senate, where, sinee the admission of Morkla and 'IVxas in 
1845, the slave states were in the majority. 

But the ^^'ilmot Pnniso was not drojijied. It was passed 
again and again by the House, and was before the eountry as 
the oHieial demand of the antislavery men in the organizatitMi of 
the new territory It nuist be noted jiartieularly that the Wihnot 
Proviso ailvoeated the abandonment oi the jirineiple of the Mis- 
souri Compromise of 18 jo," sinee about half of the territory of 
New Mexieo and California lay south of the' parallel of 36° 30'. 

1 The ;k\"ouiU of I'lOmont's joiunov over tlio Sioir.i Nevada nunintains to the 
valley of San Joaquin, in 1S44, reads like the roinantie adventures of an explorer 
of the sixteenth eentury. For eleven months his dilVieult path lay alternately over 
the icy crests of the mountains and through Valleys parehed with tropical heat. 
Orders had lieen sent from Washington to hold him at St. Louis, for fear his 
jiroposed expedition would give otYense to Mexico. lUit his wife (Senator 
Henton's daughter") held the message until he was fairly started on his way. 

- It was only the /////.//A- of the Missouri Compromise that was abandoned, 
for of comse the Wilmot Proviso did not affect tiiat (.\Mnpromise itself, -ihkh 
ij/'/'iit-ii to the- I.ouis'uutii Ptif\>msf fc-nifon' only. The I'nited States in 1820 could 
make no l.iw touching the Spanish territory west of the Rockies. 



The Compromise of 1830 353 

The Orc^^on rcpon was naturally the llrst to be orKanizc-cl, 513.^The^or- 
brin^^ acquired nearly two years before tin- Mc xic-an lands. As Oregon, and 
there was no chance for ihe cultivation of cotton, su^ar, or rice in ^}]l^^''^'^l^^^ 
this re-ion, the controversy over slavery need not have enterc-d 1846-1848 
into the Ore-on bill at all. Jkit the radical leacU-rs of the South 
were not willin- to let Wilmot's challen-c K'> unanswercl. So 
Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a disciple of Calhoun, and 
destined in a lew years to become his successor as the cham- 
pion of the interests of the slave states, introduced an amend- 
ment into the Ore-on bill to the effect that " nothin- should 
auUiorize the prohibition of slavery in ( )reo<.n so lon-^ as it was 
a territory of the United States." Davis's amc-ndment, like 
Wilmot's, was defeated, and Oregon was organized as a terri- 
tory without slavery in August, 1848. JUit the significant thing 
in the debates of 1846-1848 was that both the antislavery and 
die ])r(>slavery leaders were dissatisfied with die Missouri Com- 
promise made a quarter of a century earlier. 'I'hc one side now 
demanded die exclusion of slavery from New Mexico m the 
South, the oUier its admission to Oregon in the North. 

When therefore Tolk, in his special message of July, 184S, 5l4^^The^^ 
urged Congress to proceed to the immediate organization of slavery in the 
California and New Mexico, which had been undc-r military ^^^^ 
regime since their conquest in 1846, diere were three ways of 
dealing widi the ciuestion of slavery in the territories under 
discussion. The Wilmot IMoviso might be adopted, excluding 
slavery from the whole region; the Calhoun-Davis dieory ^ 
might be accepted, opening the whole region to slavery ; or 
the principle of die Missouri Compromise might be applied, 
dividing California and New Mexico into free and slave sec- 
tions by a parallel of latitude running to the Pacific coast. 

1 That theory was, bricHy, as follows : slaves were private properly ; private 
property was subject to state laws, not national law; the territor.es were the 
com'mon property of the states, held in trust by the naUon ; hence Congress 
could not pass any law excluding from the territories property whose possession 
was legal in the states. This theory made the Missouri Compromise uncon- 
stitutional. 



354 



Slavery and the West 



515. The 
campaign of 
1848 



516. Lewis 
Cass and the 
doctrine of 
" squatter 
sovereignty " 



517. General 
Taylor, the 
Whig nominee 



The presidential campaign of 1848 had little effect on the 
settlement of the problem before the country. It only showed 
that both of the political parties were still trying to keep in favor 
with both sections of the country in order to avoid being split on 
the slavery issue. The Democrats nominated a Northern man 
who was opposed to the Wilmot Proviso, while the Whigs 
nominated a Southerner who repudiated the extreme proslavery 
doctrine of Calhoun and Davis. 

Lewis Cass, the Democratic nominee, had been an excellent 
governor of Michigan territory during the War of 18 12, Secre- 
tary of War under Jackson, and minister to France under Van 
Buren. He advocated allowing each territory, when the time 
came for it to apply for admission to the Union, to decide for 
itself whether it should come in as a free or a slave state. 
The question would be determined by the character of the im- 
migration into the territory. Those territories which were suit- 
able for slave labor would naturally attract slaveholders, and 
would apply for admission to the Union as slave states ; while 
the others would naturally be filled up with a free population, 
and come in with state constitutions prohibiting slavery. This 
doctrine of Cass was called ''popular sovereignty," or more 
familiarly '' squatter sovereignty," because it left to the " people" 
or the " squatters " in the territory the determination of the 
slavery question for themselves. 

The Whigs nominated a candidate even less pronounced than 
Cass in his views on the slavery question, — General Zachary 
Taylor, the hero of Buena Vista. Taylor was a Louisiana sugar 
planter, and the owner of several hundred slaves. But he had 
not manifested any interest in the extension of slavery. He had 
had no experience in political affairs, and for years had not 
even voted. The Whigs nominated him for his brilliant record 
in the Mexican War, hoping that he would repeat the sweeping 
victory of General Harrison in 1840. " Old Rough and Ready " 
was the campaign cry, recalling the '' Tippecanoe and Tyler too " 
of eight years before. 



TJie Compromise of i8jo 355 

In striking contrast to the evasive attitude of both Whigs and 518. The 
Democrats on the slavery question, was the platform of a new party, 1848 
party, the Free-Soilers. This party was made up of the friends 
of Van Buren (who had been " shelved " in 1844 to make room 
for a candidate in favor of annexing Texas), of " Conscience 
Whigs," who were disgusted with the nomination by their party 
of a Louisiana slaveholder for president, and of the Liberty 
party of 1844. The Free-Soilers declared in their platform 
that it was " the settled policy of the nation not to extend, 
nationalize, or encourage slavery, but to limit, localize, and dis- 
courage it," They inscribed on their banner, " Free soil, free 
speech, free labor, free men." 

The new party differed from the Garrison abolitionists in 519. The 
that it prized the Union and accepted the Constitution with notaboii-'^ 
all its compromises on slavery. It even differed in a most impor- Zionists 
tant respect from the Liberty party, which it largely absorbed. 
For the Liberty party of 1844 wished to abolish slavery in the 
Southern states, where it was protected by the Constitution, 
whereas the Free-Soilers demanded only its exclusion from the 
territories of the United States. The Liberty men denounced 
the existence of slavery in any part of the Union ; the Free- 
Soilers opposed the extejision of slavery to the trans-Mississippi 
territories of the Union. This distinction is of great importance, 
because it was the Free-Soil doctrine and not the abolitionist 
doctrine that was made the basis a few years later of the new 
Republican party, which finally overthrew slavery. 

The Free-Soilers nominated Van Buren, who had become 520. The 
a pronounced antislavery man after leaving the White House, xayior'^ ° 
Although they did not carry any states, they elected enough 
congressmen to hold the balance between Whigs and Demo- 
crats in the sessions of 1849-185 1, and took enough votes from 
Cass in -New York to give that state, and consequently the 
election, to Taylor, by an electoral vote of 163 to 127.^ 

1 The similar defeat of Clay, in 1844, by the votes given Birney, the Liberty 
candidate, in New York, will be recalled (see pp. 340-341). 



356 



Slavery a7id the West 



521. The 
organization 
of the Mexi- 
can cession 
hangs fire, 
1848-1849 



522. The 
discovery of 
gold in Cali- 
fornia Janu- 
ary, 1848 



The last Congress under President Polk adjourned March 4, 
1849, without having taken any steps toward the organiza- 
tion of New Mexico and California. Slavery had been actually 
excluded from the whole region by a Mexican law of 1837, but 
Calhoun contended that the transfer of the land to the United 
States extinguished the Mexican law in it. He and Davis de- 
manded that Congress should introduce slavery into the terri- 
tory and legalize it there by a definite statute. Their opponents 
declared, in the words of Henry Clay, that '' no power in the 
world could make them vote to establish slavery where it did 
not exist." And even President Taylor, himself a slave owner, 
went so far as to say, in an address in Pennsylvania (August, 
1849), ''The people of the North need have no apprehension 
of the further extension of slavery." With these divergent views, 
there seemed to be as little prospect of a speedy or peaceful 
organization of New Mexico and California under Taylor as 
under Polk. But the years 18 48- 18 49 brought a change on 
the Pacific coast itself which gave a new aspect to the question. 

Just as the final negotiations for peace with Mexico were 
begun (January, 1848), gold was discovered in the Sacramento 
valley in California. As the news of the richness of the deposits 
spread, a wild rush into the gold fields began. Merchants, 
farmers, physicians, lawyers, artisans, shopkeepers, and serv- 
ants abandoned their business to stake out claims in the gold 
valleys, from which thousands took their fortunes in a few 
weeks.^ The fever extended even to the Atlantic coast. Men 
started on the nine months' sail around Cape Horn, or, cross- 
ing the pestilence-laden Isthmus of Panama, fought like wild 
animals for a passage on the infrequent ships sailing up to the 
Californian coast. Others went '' overland," making their way 
slowly across the Western deserts and mountains in their 
unwieldy " prairie schooners," the monotonous dread of famine 

1 The product of the California mines and washings was fabulous. The country ^ 
was hailed as a modem El Dorado. Five years after the discovery, the gold yield 
was ^5,000,000 in a single year. In fifty years over $2,000,000,000 was taken 
from the mines. 



The Compromise of 18^0 



357 



and thirst varied only by the excitement of Indian attacks. The 

immigration by sea and land in the single year 1849 raised the 

population of California from 6000 to over 85,000 souls. 

The " Forty-niners," as these gold seekers were called, came 523. caii- 

almost wholly from the free states of the North. Migration u°p a'^' f r?e^'^ 

across thousands of miles of desert country did not tempt constitution, 

■' ^ September, 

the plantation owner with his slaves. Consequently, when dele- 1849 

gates from the new Californian immigrants met at Monterey, 
in September, 1849, at the call of the military governor, Riley, 

to devise a government, they 
drew up a constitution ex- 
cluding slavery by a unani- 
mous vote. When Congress 
met in December, 1849, 
therefore, California was no 
longer waiting to be organ- 
ized as a territory, but was 
ready for admission to the 
Union as a state, and a state 
with a free constitution. 

It was, therefore, evident 524. The 
that the Congress of 1849- ^tngress. 

18 c; I would have to deal in December, 

. 1849 

earnest with the organization 




-VL.^^ 



The Discovery of Gold at Sutter's 
Mill, California 



of the new territory. With 
the example of California before them, the people of New Mexico 
were already planning a government for themselves. A bitter 
boundary quarrel was developing between New Mexico and 
Texas. Finally, the abolitionists, roused by the acquisition of 
new territory in the southwest suitable for slavery, were re- 
doubling their petitions to Congress to prove its control over 
the territories of the United States, by abolishing slavery in 
the District of Columbia. In spite of Taylor's message to the 
assembled Congress, advising them to " abstain from the in- 
troduction of those exciting topics of sectional character which 



358 Slavery and the West 

have hitherto produced painful apprehension in the public mind," 
— in plain words, not to quarrel about slavery, — the Congress 
and the country at large believed that the acquisition of the new 
Western lands had brought a crisis which must now be faced. 

The Omnibus Bill 

Probably no other gathering of public men in our history, 
except the convention which met at Philadelphia in 1787 to 
frame the Constitution of the United States, contained so many 
orators and political geniuses of the first rank as the Senate 
which assembled in December, 1849. There met, for the last 
time, the great triumvirate of American statesmen. Clay, Web- 
ster, and Calhoun, — all three born during the Revolutionary 
War, and all so identified with every public question for a gen- 
eration that to write the biography of any one of them would 
be to write the history of our country during that period. With 
them came a number of brilliant men whose names appear often 
on these pages, Benton, Cass, Bell, Douglas, Davis, Seward, 
Chase, and Hale, — the last three being the first pronounced 
antislavery delegation in the Senate. In the House, Democrats 
and Whigs were so evenly matched (112 to 105) that the thir- 
teen Free-Soilers held the balance of power. The temper of 
Congress was shown at the very beginning of the session, when 
in a fierce struggle for the speakership, a fiery proslavery mem- 
ber from Georgia, Robert Toombs, declared amid hisses and 
applause that if the North sought to drive the slaveholder from 
New Mexico and California — land " purchased by the common 
blood and treasure of the nation " — and thereby "to fix a 
national degradation on half the states of the Confederacy," 
he was ready for disimion. 

In this critical situation the aged Henry Clay, whose voice 
had been raised for moderation and conciliation ever since the 
days of the Missouri Compromise thirty years before, again came 
forward with measures calculated to reconcile the opposing 
sections (January 29, 1850). Clay proposed that (i) California 



The Compromise of i8jo 



359 



should be admitted as a free state ; (2) the rest of the Mexican 
cession should be divided by the thirty-seventh parallel of latitude 
into the territories of Utah on the north and New Mexico on the 
south, both organized on the '' squatter-sovereignty " principle ^ ; 
(3) the boundaries of the slaveholding state of Texas should be 
cut down from 379,000 to 264,000 square miles, but in return 
Texas should receive $10,000,000 from the government to pay 
her war debt contracted before 1845 ; (4) the slave trade (but 
not slavery) should be prohibited in the District of Columbia ; 
(5) a new fugitive-slave law should be enacted, making the 
recovery of runaway negroes much easier than under the old 
law of 1793. This measure of Clay's was called the '' Omnibus 
Bill," on account of the number of provisions which it included.^ 

We can see what a difficult task Clay had undertaken when 527. conflict 
we compare the demands of the radical leaders. North and of Northland 
South, on these questions. On the 



South 



Qicestioii of 
(i) California 

(2) New Mexico 



(3) Texas 



(4) District of 

Columbia 

(5) Fugitive 

slaves 



The South demanded 

organization as a terri- 
tory, admitting slavery 

legalization of slavery by 
Congress (at least be- 
low 36° 30') 

the same boundaries as 
the Texan republic 
claimed in 1836 

no interference with slav- 
ery by Congress 

a strict law enforced by 
national authority, with 
no jury trial for negroes 



The NoHh demanded 
immediate admission as a 

free state 
the application of the 

Wilmot Proviso 

a reduction in the size of 
Texas without any 
money compensation 

abolition of slavery 

jury trial for every negro 
claimed as a fugitive 
slave 



1 This division of New Mexico was in reality the extension of the Missouri- 
Compromise to the new territory. It was expected that slavery would enter New 
Mexico, but not the northern territory of Utah, 

2 Strictly speaking, only the clauses referring to California, New Mexico, and 
Texas were called the Omnibus Bill. But the other two propositions (4 and 5) 
were so intimately connected with them, both in time and purpose, that the whole 
legislation may be considered together. 



360 Slavery a7id the West 

The debates on the compromise measures called forth some 
of the finest speeches ever made in the Senate. Clay's fervid 
plea for harmony, in introducing his bills, was enhanced by the 
fact that the venerable statesman, now in his seventy-third 
year, had left the quiet of his well-earned retirement to make 
this supreme effort for the preservation of the Union, whose 
welfare and glory had been his chief pride since his boyhood's 
recollection of the inauguration of his great Virginia neighbor, 
George Washington. 

Calhoun was to speak on the fourth of March. •But he was 
too enfeebled by the ravages of consumption to deliver his care- 
fully prepared speech. He was borne to his place in the Senate 
chamber, where he sat, alive only in the great deep eyes which 
still flashed beneath his heavy brows, while his colleague, Senator 
Mason, read his speech. It was a message of despair. The en- 
croachments of the North on the constitutional rights of the 
slaveholders had already proceeded so far, he said, that the 
great Kentuckian's plan of compromise was futile. The North 
was the aggressor. He7' institutions were not attacked, her 
property was not threatened, her rights were not invaded. She 
must cease all agitation against slavery, return the fugitive 
slaves willingly, and restore to the South her equal rights in all 
parts of the Union and all acquired territory. Otherwise, the 
cords which had bound the states together for two generations 
would every one be broken, and our Republic would be dis- 
solved into warring sections. It was Calhoun's last word. 
Before the month closed, he had passed beyond all earthly strife. 

Daniel Webster spoke on the seventh of March. Webster 
had put himself squarely on record against the extension of 
slavery into new territory. Besides his New York speech of 
1837, already quoted (p. 337), he had said in the Oregon de- 
bates that his objections to slavery were " irrespective of lines 
and latitudes, taking in the whole country and the whole ques- 
tion." The antislavery men of the North, therefore, to many of 
whom W^ebster was almost an idol, were bitterly disappointed 



The Compromise of iS^o 361 

when he spoke in favor of Clay's compromise measures. His 
love of the Union, and his desire to see peace reestablished be- 
tween the two sections, proved stronger than his hatred of 
slavery. He maintained that there was no danger that New 
Mexico would become slave territory, because the physical 
geography of the region forever excluded the cotton planter 
from its deserts and high plateaus. " I would not take pains," 
he said, " uselessly to reaffirm an ordinance of nature or to 
reenact the will of God. I would put in no Wilmot Proviso for 
the mere purpose of a taunt or a reproach." He spoke in be- 
half of the fugitive-slave law, because such a law had always 
been on the statute books of the country. He denounced the 
abolitionists as men who had no right to set up their conscience 
in opposition to the law. In a fine peroration he implored his 
countrymen of the South to dismiss the awful thought of seces- 
sion and cherish the Union forever. The Free-Soilers said that 
the great man's ambition to be the next president tempted him 
to forsake his principles in the seventh-of-March speech. But 
his sincere, though mistaken, belief that the Union could be 
saved by compromise is sufficient to account for his support of 
Clay's measures, without attributing base motives to him. 

Webster was answered a few days later by William H. Seward, 531. seward 
the new Whig senator from New York. Seward raised the high^er^irw, ^ 
question from the political to the moral level. He thought the March n, 
compromise vicious because it surrendered principles. The law 
might stand on the statute books, but the conscience of the 
people would condemn it and repudiate it. The Constitution 
might tolerate slavery, but there was " a higher law than the 
Constitution," namely the moral law. " The simple, bold, 
and even awful question which presents itself to us," he said, 
" is this : Shall we, who are founding institutions social and 
political for countless millions — shall we who are free to 
choose the wise and just and to reject the erroneous and injuri- 
ous — shall we establish human bondage or permit it in our 
sufferance to be established t Sir, our forefathers would not 



362 Slavery and the West 

have hesitated one hour ! They found slavery existing here, 
and they left it only because they could not remove it. But 
there is no state, free or slave, which, if it had had the alterna- 
tive as we now have, would have founded slavery." Seward's 
appeal to the '' higher law " was in line with the abolitionists' 
doctrine that the moral evil of slavery far outweighed all polit- 
ical, legal, or economic considerations. The phrase '^ the higher 
law " spread through the North, greatly strengthening the anti- 
slavery sentiment. 

532. Chase's Another powerful speech against the compromise was de- 
25-29, 1850'^^ livered on the twenty-sixth of March by Salmon P. Chase of 

Ohio, like Seward newly elected to the Senate. Chase was a 
man of splendid stature, a powerful orator, and a wise and 
courageous statesman. He had been a Democrat, but Birney's 
abolitionist paper in his home city of Cincinnati, together with 
his own observation of the contrast between the civilization on 
the right bank and that on the left bank of the Ohio, had con- 
verted him to the Free-Soil party. He denounced the com- 
promise as a weak surrender to the slaveholders' interests. 
In answer to Calhoun he declared that not the North but the 
South had been the aggressor ever since the days when threats 
and intimidation had forced upon the framers of the Constitu- 
tion concessions to slavery. He derided the Southerners' 
talk of secession as " stale." 

533. The The great debate on the compromise seemed no nearer its end 
"^°^ "under i^ July than it had been in January. It was known that President 

Taylor (who was much under the influence of Seward) would 
veto any measure favorable to the extension of slavery, and the 
Clay-Webster forces could not hope for the necessary two-thirds 
majority in Congress to pass the bill over Taylor's veto. But 
the whole aspect of the question changed when Taylor died, 
after a four days' illness, July 9, 1850. Vice President Fillmore, 
who succeeded him, was in favor of the compromise, and with 
the help of the administration the bills were passed through 
the Senate and the House by fair majorities, and signed by 



Fillmore, 
August, 1850 



The Compromise of i8_§o 



363 



President Fillmore in August and September. The eventful 
nine months' session of Congress closed in October. 

The Compromise Measures of 1850 were as decidedly in 534. Analysis 
favor of the South as the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had promise °™' 

been in favor of the North. California was admitted as a free Measures of 

1850 
state, to be sure ; ^ but the advantage to the antislavery inter- 
ests ended there. The prohibition of the slave trade in the tiny 
District of Columbia relieved antislavery congressmen of the 




Free States 
Free Teiritorie 
Slave States 



The Status of Slavery by the Compromise of 1850 



pain of seeing shackled gangs of slaves driven to the boats on 
the Potomac, under the very shadow of the dome of the Capitol, 
to be sold to the cotton and rice plantations of the lower South ; 
but it had no practical effect on the domestic slave trade, which 
was amply supplied by Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky. 

On the other hand, the concessions to the South were gen- 
erous. Both the extension of the Missouri-Compromise line to 
the Pacific and the agitation for the enactment of the Wilmot 

1 Since there were fifteen free and fifteen slave states at the beginning of 
1850, the admission of California gave the Senate a majority for the North. 
After 1850 no new slave states were admitted. 



535. Conces- 
sions to the 
South 



364 



Slavery and the West 



536. The new 
fugitive- 
slave law 



Proviso were given up. The whole of the Mexican cession east 
of California was opened to slavery. The reduction of the 
boundaries of Texas was no disadvantage to the slave cause, 
since slavery was not forbidden in the territory transferred from 
Texas to New Mexico, while the payment of $10,000,000 to 
Texas set that state on the path to prosperity, which made it 
a powerful aid to the Confederate cause in the great struggle 
of the Civil War ten years later. 

Finally, the new fugitive-slave law brought the whole ma- 
chinery of the United States into play, if necessary, to recover a 
runaway negro. The fugitive was not allowed a trial, either in 
the state where he was seized or in the state from which he had 
fled. The magistrate's fee was twice as large when he handed 
the negro over to the claimant as when he declared the negro 
free. The alleged fugitive was not allowed to testify in his own 
behalf. The United States marshals were heavily fined if they 
let the reclaimed fugitive escape. At the call of the marshals 
all good citizens of any state must aid in the seizure of the 
runaway negro, and persons willfully preventing his arrest or 
helping his escape were subject to a fine of $1000, or six 
months' imprisonment, in addition to damages to the owner, up 
to $1000, for the value of the slave. Thus, this new law 
commanded the recognition of slavery and the protection of 
slave property in every part of the United States, and made 
every man and woman of a free state a partner in the gruesome 
business of restoring to a revengeful master the fugitive who 
had followed the Northern Star to the " land of freedom." 



A Four Years' Truce 
537. The The Compromise Measures of 1850 were regarded by the 

of 1850 °"^ vast majority of the people of the United States as a final 
a flnaiadjust- settlement of the sectional disputes over slavery. The status of 

ment of the slavery was now fixed in every square mile of our domain from 
slavery ques- 
tion the Atlantic to the Pacific. Henry Clay was hailed as " the great 

Pacificator," and the foremost statesmen of both parties devoted 



The Compromise of i8jo 365 

their best talents to proving that the Compromise of 1850 
was the just and sole basis on which the Union could be pre- 
served. The agitation over slavery in the new western territory 
had caused much talk of disunion in the South. A convention 
was assembled at Nashville, Tennessee, in the early summer of 
1850, to decide on what terms the cotton states would still 
remain in the Union. But the passage of the Compromise 
Measures quieted the disunion movement. The Unionists were 
overwhelmingly triumphant in the elections of 185 1 in every 
Southern state but South Carolina. 

In the Northern states it was harder to make the people 538. North- 
accept the Compromise of 1850. In spite of the efforts of such against the 
persuasive advocates as Webster and Choate in the East and ^lave^u' 
Douglas and Cass in the West, the pulpit, press, and platform 
would not cease in their condemnation of the new fugitive-slave 
law. On the other points of the compromise the antislavery senti- 
ment of the North would have yielded, in view of Webster's 
assurance that the soil and climate of New Mexico would never 
attract the slaveholder. But to have every man and woman in 
the free-soil states enlisted as a helper in the business of return- 
ing the fugitive slave to his owner was more than the North 
could bear. A public meeting in Indiana declared its " absolute 
refusal to obey the inhuman and diabolical provisions " of the 
fugitive-slave law, and the declaration was indorsed by hun- 
dreds of mass meetings from Boston to Chicago. 

For several years there had been in operation in New York, 539. The 
Pennsylvania, and all along the northern bank of the Ohio ranroS^""*^ 
River a system called the '^ underground railroad," whose ob- 
je'ct was to give food, shelter, and pecuniary aid to the negro 
escaping across the line into the free states. Prominent citizens 
were engaged in this work, offering their barns and sheds, and 
even their houses, as " stations " on the " underground." The 
fugitive was passed on from station to station with remark- 
able secrecy and dispatch until he reached the shores of Lake 
Erie and took ship for Canada. The actual number of slaves 



366 Slavery and tJie West 

escaping by the '' underground " was comparatively small ; but 
so long as they helped even a few slaves over the border, the 
abolitionists felt that they were doing something to hamper and. 
defeat the horrible system of bondage. The people of the free 
sta\:es felt fairly secure in breaking the old fugitive-slave law of 
1793, because that law depended on the state authorities for its 
execution, and in a notable case (Prigg vs. Pennsylvania), in 



Chief Routes of the Underground Railroad 

1842, the Supreme Court of the United States had decided that 
the Constitution did not compel the officers of a state to assist 
in restoring fugitive slaves. 

The new law of 1850, however, if enforced, would have closed 
every station on the '' underground " and made the soil of Ohio 
as dangerous for the escaping negro as the canebrakes of Louisi- 
ana or the swamps of Virginia. There was some violent resist- 
ance to the enforcement of the fugitive-slave law, and a good deal 
of secret evasion of its commands ; yet by the end of the year 
185 1 the success of the Compromise Measures seemed assured. 
540. The The presidential campaign of the next year (1852) contrib- 

victory of ^tcd to the Strength of the Compromise of 1850. There were 
^^^^ no important issues before the peojile. The great Whig leader, 



The Compromise of 1830 367 

Henry Clay, died in June, carrying his party to the grave with 
him, as he had brought it into existence twenty years before.^ 
The Whigs made a desperate attempt to win the presidency by 
the nomination of their third military candidate. General Win- 
field Scott, the " hero of Lundys Lane and Chapultepec " ; but 
Scott carried only four of the thirty-one states of the Union. 
The Democrats, after a long contest between Douglas, Marcy, 
Cass, and Buchanan for the nomination, had been obliged to 
unite on a " dark horse." On the forty-ninth ballot their con- 
vention nominated General Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, 
a young man of fine presence and winning personality, who had 
a creditable but not brilliant record as a legislator and soldier. 
Pierce's sweeping victory of 254 electoral votes to 32 for Scott 
was a vote of confidence in the fidelity of the Democratic party 
to the Compromise of 1850. Pierce announced in his inaugural 
address that a " sense of repose and security had been restored 
throughout the country," and expressed the '' fervent hope that no 
sectional or fanatical excitement might again threaten the dura- 
bility of our institutions or obscure the light of our prosperity." 

When Pierce mentioned " the light of our prosperity," he 541. The 
struck the real note of the truce of 18 50- 185 4. It was a busi- thrcountry', 
ness man's peace. The commercial and industrial classes were 1850-1854 
tired of the agitation over slavery. They were glad to have Con- 
gress stop discussing the Missouri Compromise and the Wilmot 
Proviso, and attend to the business interests of the country. 
An era of great prosperity was opening. The discovery of 
immense deposits of gold and silver in California ; the extension 
of the wheat fields into Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota; the 
great increase in the products of the Northern mills and facto- 
ries ; and the growing fleet of our merchant marine, were all 
signs of rapidly increasing wealth. The railroad mileage of the 
country up to the year 1848 was less than 6000, but during 

1 It was in 1832 that Clay, by forcing through Congress the bill for the re- 
charter of the National Bank, set up the standard around which the opponents 
of President Jackson rallied to form the Whig party. 













L.L. POATES CO., N. 



CANCER, f- 



Canals and Railroads operated in 1S50 
368 



ton" in the 
South 



The Compromise of 18^0 369 

the next ten years over 16,500 miles of new track were laid. 
Between 1850 and 1855 ^^ important railroads of the Atlantic 
coast (the New York Central, the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the 
Baltimore and Ohio) were all connected with the Great Lakes 
or the Ohio River.^ Thus the immense northern basin of the 
Mississippi, which, as part of the Louisiana Purchase, had been 
connected with the Gulf of Mexico, through the highway of 
the great river, now began to be joined with the Eastern states 
and to send its growing trade through the Great Lakes and 
over the Atlantic-seaboard railroads. 

The wealth of the South seemed even more firm in its foun- 542. The 
dations and more rapid in its increase. An apparently limitless "^K^ng cot- 
demand for cotton by the mills of America and Europe en- 
couraged the cultivation of that staple to the neglect of every 
other form of industry. By 1850 the value of the cotton crop 
was over $100,000,000 annually, while the rice and sugar crops 
combined yielded less than $16,000,000. In the same year, of 
the total of $137,000,000 of exports from the United States, 
$72,000,000 (or 53 per cent) was in cotton, as against 
$26,000,000 (or 19 per cent) in grain and provisions. Such a 
trade naturally led the Southerners to believe that slavery was 
the basis of the prosperity of the country. '' Cotton is king!" 
they said. '' In the 3,000,000 bags of cotton that slave labor 
annually throws upon the world, we are doing more to advance 
civilization than all the canting philanthropists of New and Old 
England will do in a century."^ 

1 An interesting result of this new connection was shown in the immense 
growth of the Lake cities, Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, 
in the decade 1S50-1860. 

2 The Southern writers were guilty of two serious errors in their economics : 
first, in mistaking the great wealth of a few planters for general prosperity; 
secondly, in thinking that free negro labor was impossible. There were about 
75,000 large planters in the South in 1850, out of a population of about 5,000,000 
whites. Their prosperity was that of "a dominant minority," and was not diffused 
through all classes as in the North. Again, while the value of the cotton crop 
in 1850 with slave labor was ^105,000,000, in 1880 under free negro labor it was 
^275,000,000, and in 1910 over $1700,000,000. Slave labor produced 2,200,000 bales 
pf cotton in 1850 ; free labor produced nearly 15,000,000 bales in 1910. 



370 



Slavery and the West 



The immense domestic and foreign trade stimulated by our 
prosperity in the middle of the nineteenth century demanded 
the attention of Congress. Western railroads (like the canals 
and turnpikes of a quarter of a century earlier) were clamoring 
for national aid. Our rivers needed deepening and our harbors 
dredging. Our coasts were inadequately charted and lighted. 
The tariff needed revision. 

Foreign questions of delicacy and importance also arose in 
the period of the slavery debates of the mid-century. The year 
1848 was marked by revolution in almost all the countries of 
western Europe. The people were striving for more liberal 
constitutions or the overthrow of oppressive monarchies. 
Hungary, under the leadership of the patriot Kossuth, made a 
valiant effort to throw off the oppressive yoke of Austria and 
establish an independent republic. But the revolt was crushed 
by the help of Russian arms.^ Our government showed its 
sympathy with Hungary by sending an agent in 1849 to recog- 
nize the new republic as soon as there seemed a chance of 
its success. When Hiilsemann, the Austrian representative at 
Washington, protested against this as an " unfriendly act," 
Daniel Webster (who became Fillmore's Secretary of State in 
1850) replied in a famous letter, in which, so far from apolo- 
gizing to Austria, he boasted of the power, wealth, and happi- 
ness of our nation under its democratic institutions, and 
maintained '^ the right of the American people to sympathize 
with the efforts of any nation to acquire liberty." 

The next year Kossuth came to America as the nation's 
guest. His speeches roused intense enthusiasm for the Hun- 
garian cause, but our political leaders were careful to let him 
know that he could not expect more from our government than 
expressions of sympathy. He left in the summer of 1852, 
after a six months' visit, flattered by the lavishness with which 
the nation had entertained him, but disappointed with the nig- 
gardly contributions which the people had made to his cause. 

1 See Robinson and Beard, Development of Modern Europe, Vol. II, pp. 72-84. 



The Compromise of iS^o 371 

It seemed as though no decade of our history could pass 546. British 
without some new cause for ill feeling toward Great Britain. p?ojecS^of^a° 
To the perpetual quarrel over the rights of our fishermen off the ?f °^^ th *^^°^ 
Canadian coast, and the disputes over our northern boundaries, ©f Pasama 
there was added in the middle of the nineteenth century an 
important controversy in Central America. We had looked 
forward for years to building a canal cutting the isthmus which 
connects the two great continents of the Western Hemisphere, 
and had even made a treaty in 1846 with the Spanish-American 
republic of New Granada (now Colombia), in which we agreed 
to keep open to all nations, on the same terms, any canal or 
railroad built across the Isthmus of Panama. The discovery 
of gold in California shortly afterwards (1848) set American 
capitalists, headed by Cornelius Vanderbilt, actively to planning 
transportation routes across the Isthmus. Here they came into 
collision with the British, who had a colony in Central America, 
and were attempting to extend their " protectorate " over miles 
of the coast. A British warship even bombarded the port which 
the American transportation company was making its terminus 
on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus. 

After long negotiations Clayton, our Secretary of State under 547. The 
President Taylor, came tc an agreement with the British ^^er^°eatyof 
minister. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, in 1850. The Clayton- ^850 
Bulwer Treaty, which remained in force until the end of the 
nineteenth century, provided that the United States and Great 
Britain should jointly guarantee the neutrality of any canal 
built across the Isthmus. Each government pledged itself not 
to seek exclusive control over the canal, never to erect any 
fortifications upon it, or to acquire any colonies in Central 
America. Each, promised that it would extend its protection to 
any company that should undertake the work of building a 
canal, and would use its influence with the governments of 
Central America to give their aid and consent to such a 
project. We shall trace in a later chapter the fortunes of the 
Clayton-Bulwer Treaty. 



3/2 Slavery and the West 

The most critical incident in our mid-century diplomacy, 
however, concerned Cuba. That rich island possession of Spain, 
lying just off our coast, had been regarded with especial 
interest by our statesmen ever since the transfer of Florida to 
the United States in 1819. As the antislavery sentiment of the 
North developed, restricting the area of slavery in the trans- 
Mississippi region (by the Missouri Compromise), and seeking 
to make the exclusion of slavery the condition of annexing 
more western territory (by the Wilmot Proviso), Cuba became 
increasingly desirable in the eyes of the Southerners. The 
magnificent island, " the Pearl of the Antilles," would make 
three populous slave states. The ever-threatening danger that 
Cuba might revolt from Spain and set up a black republic 
almost within sight of the Florida coast would be forever 
removed by its annexation to the United States. 
549. At- Spain steadily refused all our offers for Cuba, even when 

ch?s^e o/seize they rose to the generous sum of ^120,000,000, or eight times 
Cuba ^]^g price paid for the great Louisiana territory. The ministry 

at Madrid replied to President Polk in 1848 that they "had 
rather see Cuba sunk in the ocean than transferred to any 
power." Still, Spanish government was oppressive in Cuba, and 
the island was in a chronic state of revolt. The disturbed con- 
dition of Cuba and the intense desire of the Gulf States to 
annex the island led to frequent filibustering expeditions, in 
spite of prohibitions from Washington. In 185 1 about fifty 
American citizens, some of them young men belonging to the 
best families of New Orleans, joined a noted filibusterer, 
named Lopez, in a desperate attempt to seize Cuba. When the 
men were captured on the Cuban coast and promptly shot, a 
mob at New Orleans sacked the Spanish consulate, tore down 
the ensign of Castile, and defaced the portrait of Queen 
Isabella. Daniel Webster apologized for this insult to Spain, but 
a littie later Webster's successor in the State Department, William 
L. Marcy, was asking the ministry at Madrid to apologize to 
the United States for the unjust seizure and condemnation 



The Compromise of 18^0 373 

of the American steamer Black Warrior by the authorities at 
Havana. Relations between the United States and Spain were 
severely strained. 

Meanwhile, Pierce had succeeded Fillmore, and the new 550. The 
President, friendly to the South, was in favor of the annexation fgsto" 1854 °^" 
of Cuba by any fair means. He sent as minister to Spain 
Pierre Soul^ of Louisiana, the most ardent annexationist in the 
country. Marcy instructed Soule to consult with Mason, our 
minister to France, and Buchanan, our minister to England, on 
the best policy for the United States to assume toward Cuba 
after the seizure of the Black Warrior. The three ministers 
met at Ostend (in Belgium) in the late summer of 1854, and, 
under the dictation of the imperious Soul^, issued the famous 
Ostend Manifesto, which declared that the possession of Cuba 
was necessary to the peace of the United States, and that 
Spain ought to accept the overgenerous price we offered for 
it ; but if, " actuated by stubborn pride and a false sense of 
honor," Spain should refuse to sell Cuba, then we were " justi- 
fied by every law, human and divine," in wresting the island 
from her by force. 

There was, as a matter of fact, no law, human or divine, that 551. war 
could justify the language of the Ostend Manifesto or the deed ^^erte^^,^i854 
of pure robbery which it proposed.-^ Still, the desire for Cuba 
was keen, and it is impossible to say to what lengths the ad- 
ministration, under Southern influence, would have gone to 
secure the island, had not another great controversy arisen in 
the year 1854, which absorbed the attention of Congress and 
aroused such indignation in the North as had not been seen 
since the days of the Stamp Act. The cautious Marcy dis- 
owned the Ostend Manifesto, and a few months later accepted 
Spain's tardy apology for the Black Warrior affair. It was 
reserved for a far greater disaster to another American vessel 

1 The proceeding was all the more shameful because France and England, 
which had been seeking to guarantee Spain's possession of Cuba, were both at 
the moment (1854) engaged in the Crimean War in the East 



374 Slavery and the West 

forty-four years later — the destruction of the Maine in Havana 
harbor — to precipitate the war which cost Spain " the Pearl 
of the Antilles." 

REFERENCES 

The New Territory: J. B. MacM aster, History of the People of the 
United States, Vol. VII, chap. Ixxxiii ; H. VON Holst, Constitutional 
History of the United States, Vol. Ill, chaps, xiii, xiv; A. B. Hart, 
American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. IV, Nos. 15-18; Salmon 
P. Chase, chap, v ; G. P. Garrison, Westward Extension (American 
Nation Series), chaps, xvi, xvii, xix ; Edward Stanwood, History of 
the Presidency, chap, xviii ; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, a 
History, Vol. I, chaps, xv-xviii; T. C. Smith, The Liberty and Free- Soil 
Parties in the Northwest (Harvard Historical Studies, Vol. VI) ; J. R. 
Lowell, The Biglow Papers (First Series). 

The Omnibus Bill: Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 19-22 ; Garrison, chap, xx; 
VoN Holst, Vol. Ill, chaps, xv, xvi; William MacDonald, Select 
Documents of United States History, lyjd-iSdi, Nos. 78-83 ; G. T. 
Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster, Vol. II, chaps, xxxvi, xxxvii; J. F. 
Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 18^0, Vol. 
I, chap, ii ; Carl Schurz, Henry Clay, Vol. II, chap, xxvi ; Horace 
Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. I, chap, xv; Henry Wilson, 
Rise and Fall of the Slave Power, Vol. II, chaps, xxi-xxiv ; Jefferson 
Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, Vol. I, chaps, 
ii, iii. 

A Four Years' Truce: T. C. Smith, Parties and Slavery (Am. 
Nation), chaps, i-vi; Stanwood, chap, xix; Rhodes, Vol. I, chap, 
iii; MacDonald, No. 77; J. W. Burgess, The Middle Period, chap, 
xviii; Old South Leaflets, No. iii; A. T. Hadley, Railroad Trans- 
portation, its History and its Laws, chaps, i, ii ; D. R. Dewey, Finan- 
cial History of the United States, chaps, x, xi ; Garrison, chap, xviii ; 
I. D. Travis, The History of the Clayton- Bulwer Treaty {Michigan 
Political Science Publications, Vol. II, No. 8) ; J. H. Latan^, The 
Diplomacy of the United States in Regard to Cuba [American Historical 
Association Report, 1897, pp. 217-277); James Schouler, Histoty of 
the United States^ Vol. V, chaps, xx, xxi. 



The Compromise of 18^0 375 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. John C. Fremont's Explorations : Old South Leaflets, No. 45 ; R. G. 
Thwaites, Rocky Moicntain Exploration, pp. 228-243; J. C. Fri^mont, 
Report of Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 
1842, and to Oregon and North California in the Years 184J-1844 ; 
Jessie B. Fremont, Souveftirs of my Time, pp. 189-209; Cetitjiry 
Magazi7te, Vol. XIX, pp. 759-780 (with interesting illustrations). 

2. Daniel Webster and the Slavery Question : J. B. MacM aster. Life 
of Webster, pp. 241-254, 303-324; Rhodes, Vol. I, pp. 137-161 ; 
Alexander Johnston, American Orations, Vol. II, pp. 161-201 ; H. C. 
Lodge, Daniel Webstej-, pp. 301-332; Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 20, 21; 
J. G. Whittier, Ichabod; W. C. Wilkinson, Daniel Webster and the 
Compromise of 1830 [Scribtier's, Vol. XII, pp. 411-425). 

3. The Underground Railway: Hart, Vol. Ill, Nos. 172, 183 ; Vol. 
IV, Nos. 29-32 ; W. H. Siebert, The Underground Railway, pp. 18-76; 
B. T. Washington, The Story of the Negro, Vol. I, pp. 215-250; Mac- 
Master, Vol. VII, pp. 240-257 ; A. B. Hart, Salmon P. Chase, pp. 
28-53 5 Alexander Johnston (ed. J. A. Woodburn), American Political 
History^ iy6j-i8'j6. Vol. II, pp. 127-140. 

4. Gold and Politics in California, 1849-1850 : Josiah Royce, Cali- 
fornia, pp. 220-246, 278-356; E. E. Sparks, The Expansion of the 
American People, pp. 336-350 ; Rhodes, Vol. I, pp. 111-116; Schouler, 
Vol. V, pp. 130-146; J. S. HiTTELL, The Discovery of Gold in Cali- 
fornia {Centtcry Magazine, Vol. XIX, pp. 525-536) ; MacMaster, Vol. 
VII, pp. 585-614; Bayard Taylor, El Dorado. 

5. Mid-Century Plans for a Canal across the Isthmus : MacMaster, 
Vol. VII, pp. 552-577 ; J. H. Latan^, Diplomatic Relations of the 
United States and Spanish America, pp. 176-195; T. J. Lawrence, 
Disputed Questions in Modem International Law, pp. 89-142 ; W. F. 
Johnson, Four Centuries of the Panama Canal, pp. 51-77 ; Henry 
Huberich, The Trans-Isthmian Canal, pp. 6-15. 



PART VI. THE CRISIS OF 
DISUNION 



PART VI. THE CRISIS OF 
DISUNION 

CHAPTER XIV 
APPROACHING THE CRISIS 

The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the 
Formation of the Republican Party 

By the terms of the Missouri Comproniise of 1820 all the 552. status 

Louisiana Purchase territory north of the line 36° 30', except ana Purchase 

the state of Missouri itself, was closed to slavery. It was an territory 

■' in 1850 

immense region of over half a million square miles, larger than 

all the free states east of the Mississippi River combined. While 
the attention of the country had been fixed on the annexation 
of Texas, the acquisition of the territory of Oregon in the Far 
West, the Mexican War, and the organization of the vast Mexi- 
can cession of California and New Mexico, this Louisiana terri- 
tory had remained almost unnoticed. Up to the middle of the 
nineteenth century, only the single state of Iowa (1846) and the 
single territory of Minnesota (1848) had been formed out of it. 
The rest of the region, extending from the Missouri River to 
the Rockies, was unorganized Indian territory in 1850, with ^^ 
less than 1000 white inhabitants. The addition to our domain, 
however, of the land west of the Rockies at once made the 
organization of the middle part of the Louisiana region (then 
known as Nebraska) important as a link between the Missis- 
sippi Valley and the Pacific. Thousands of emigrants were 
passing through the country on their way to the gold fields of 

379 



38o 



The Crisis of Disunion 



California, and the settlers of Missouri and Iowa, with the 

irrepressible American frontier spirit, were eager to drive the 

Indians from their borders and to press westward into the rich 

valleys of the Kansas and Missouri rivers. 

553. Stephen Accordingly, soon after the assembling of President Pierce's 

introduce^^ first Congress, in December, 1853, on a motion of Senator Dodge 

the Nebraska ^f Iowa, a bill for the org^anization of Nebraska was introduced 

Bill, January ^ 

4, 1854 into the Senate. The chairman of the Senate Committee on 

Territories was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, a self-made man of 

tremendous energy, a masterful 
politician, and an unrivaled de- 
bater, who had come from a Ver- 
mont farm to the new Western 
country as a very young man, and 
had risen rapidly through minor of- 
fices to a judgeship in the supreme 
court of Illinois. He was sent to the 
House of Representatives in 1843, 
and to the Senate in 1846. Al- 
though then but thirty-three years 
of age, Douglas immediately as- 
sumed an important place in the 
Senate, through his brilliant powers 
of debate. He was soon recognized 
as the leader of the Democratic party in the North, and after 
the death of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster, he became the fore- 
most figure in American public life. 

On January 4, 1854, Douglas reported a Nebraska Bill 
■*e (a substitute for Senator Dodge's) providing that the territory 
of Nebraska should be organized on the principle of popular 
sovereignty (or " squatter sovereignty ") as set forth in the 
Compromise of 1850. "When admitted as a state or states," 
the bill read, " the said territory . . . shall be received into the 
Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may pre- 
scribe at the time of admission." 




Stephen A. Douglas 



Approachijig the Crisis 381 

This bill was in direct contradiction to the Missouri Compro- 554. The 
mise, which \va.A forever excluded slavery from all the Louisiana pjebms^ka 
territory north of 36° 30'. Douglas did not mention the Missouri ^^^^ J^°^- 
Compromise in his bill, but when Southern Senators urged 
an amendment explicitly repealing the Compromise, Douglas 
yielded. After getting the consent of President Pierce to this 
measure through a private audience arranged by the Secretary 
of War, Jefferson Davis, Douglas on the twenty-third of 
January substituted the Kansas-Nebraska Bill for the original 
Nebraska Bill. This new bill declared that the Missouri Com- 
promise was " superseded by the principle of the legislation of 
1850 " ; and it divided the territory into two"parts by'the parallel 
of 40° north latitude, — Kansas to the south (into which it was 
expected slavery would enter), and Nebraska to the north (which 
would probably be free soil). 

The indignation of the North over the proposed annulment 555. "The 
of the Missouri Compromise was instantaneous and strong, fn^^epgnd^ent^ 
The day after the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was reported, the Democrats" 
Free-Soil men in Congress, led by Senator Chase of Ohio, 
issued a spirited protest entitled " The Appeal of the Independent 
Democrats." They denounced the bill as " a gross violation 
of a sacred pledge," an " atrocious plot " to convert the western 
territory " into a dreary region of despotism inhabited by masters 
and slaves." The Missouri Compromise, they said, had been 
for more than half the period of our national existence " uni- 
versally regarded and acted upon as inviolable American law." 
They called upon all good citizens to protest by every means 
possible against " the enormous crime " of its annulment. 

The appeal was promptly heeded. Hundreds of mass meet- 556. indig- 
ings were held in the North to denounce the bill. The legisla- Jforth ovef ^ 
tures of Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, and Douglas's bin 
Wisconsin sent their protests to Congress. Senator Seward of 
New York wrote : "A storm is rising, and such a one as our 
country has never yet seen." Douglas was denounced as a turn- 
coat, a traitor, a Judas, a Benedict Arnold, who had sold himself 



382 The Crisis of Disu7iion 

to the South for the presidential nomination. He was burned in 
effigy so frequently that he himself said he could travel from 
Boston to Chicago by the light of the fires. 
557. Why Just what Douglas's motives were in advocating the repeal 

advocated the of the Missouri Compromise will never be known. He certainly 
had put himself squarely on record as a champion of that meas- 
ure, voting in the House for the 36° 30' line at the time of the 
annexation of Texas in 1845, ^^~^^ declaring in a speech in the 
Senate four years later that the Missouri Compromise was 
" canonized in the hearts of the American people as a thing 
which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to dis- 
turb." Yet he now maintained that by the Compromise of 1850 
the American people had substituted for the principle of a li7ie 
dividijig free territory from slave territory the new principle of 
the choice of the people of the territory thefuselves, and that he 
acquiesced gladly in that change of principle. There was noth- 
ing illegal about abrogating the Missouri Compromise. It was 
simply a law of Congress, even with the word " forever " in 
it — and a law of Congress may be repealed by any subse- 
quent Congress. It is true that Douglas could not hope to win 
the Democratic nomination for President without the favor of 
the South, and perhaps this fact is sufficient to account for his 
willingness to open the Kansas-Nebraska territory to slavery. 
For the men who in all probability would be his rivals for the 
nomination in 1856 were all, in one way or another, courting 
the favor of the South in 1854.^ But this does not prove that 
Douglas, with his hearty Western confidence in the ability of 
the people of a locality to manage their own affairs, was not 
perfectly honest in preferring the "popular-sovereignty" prin- 
ciple of 1850 to the Missouri-Compromise principle of 1820. 
His position was much like that of Daniel Webster in the 
seventh of March speech four years earlier (p. 360). 

1 These men were President Pierce, who was almost slavishly following the 
guidance of his Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis ; Secretary of State Marcy, who 
advocated the annexation of Cuba ; and our Minister to England, Buchanan, 
who signed the Ostend Manifesto. 



ApproacJiing the Crisis 



383 



In the debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill Douglas proved 558. The 
himself the master of all his opponents. Alone he faced the Nebraska 
fire of Wade, Chase, Seward, Sumner, and Everett,— all mas- f/^JJ^'^'^J.' 
terly speakers, — meeting their attacks at every point with a 3°, 1854 
vigor and tact which won even from his adversaries expressions 
of admiration. On March 4, 1854, after a continuous session 




Our Western Territories, 1854 



of thirty-seven hours, which he closed with a speech lasting 
from midnight to dawn, Douglas carried the bill through the 
Senate by a vote of 37 to 14. It passed the House on May 22 
by the close vote of 113 to 100, and was signed by Pierce. 
Thus the Missouri Compromise, for thirty-four years ^' canonized 
in the hearts of the American people," was repealed, and 
485,000 square miles of territory that had been ''forever" 
dedicated to freedom were opened to the slaveholder. 



384 



The Crisis of Disunion 



Mr. James Ford Rhodes, the foremost historian of this 
period, says that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was "the most 
momentous measure that passed Congress from the day the 
Senators and Representatives first met until the outbreak of the 
Civil War." ^ It was the end of compromise on the slavery 
question. It was the declaration on the part of the South that 
no more lines of latitude or acts of Congress could debar 
slavery from the territories of the United States. It suddenly 
woke the North to the realization that no concession would 
satisfy the slaveholder short of the recognition of slavery as 
a national institution. 
559. Growth The first effect of the bill was a great accession to the anti- 
ist sentiment slavery ranks in the North. Horace Greeley, editor of the New 
in the North york Tribune, the most influential newspaper in the country at 
this period, wrote, " Pierce and Douglas have made more 
abolitionists in three months than Garrison and Phillips could 
have done in half a century." Deprived of their free territory 
in the West, the abolitionists determined that henceforth there 
should be no quarter given to slavery in the free states of the 
North. They began again to resist the Fugitive-Slave Law of 
1850, now not a "band of fanatics," but a great company of 
men of culture, rank, and wealth. 

The acquiescence of the " Christian and humane people of 
the North" in the law of 1850 had stirred Mrs. Harriet 
Beecher Stowe to write " Uncle Tom's Cabin," an exaggerated 
but powerful portrayal of the moral degradation to which slave- 
holding can reduce a man. She had implored the " kind and 
estimable people of the North " no longer " to defend, sym- 
pathize with, or pass over in silence " this horrible institution.^ 

1 Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, Vol. I, 
p. 490. 

2 Uncle Tom's Cabin, chap, xlv, " Concluding Remarks," This novel had 
a wonderful sale, and was translated into nearly all the languages of Europe. 
No other novel has had the effect on the public affairs of the nation that this 
story of " Life among the Lowly " had. It is said that when Mrs. Stowe was 
presented to President Lincoln in the White House a few years later, he said, on 
shaking her hand, " So this is the woman who brought on the Civil War." 



560. "Uncle 
Tom's 
Cabin," 1852 



Approaching the Crisis 385 

The work of Douglas gave point to the appeal of Mrs. Stowe. 561. The 
Ten states of the North passed Personal-Liberty acts, forbidding Liberty acts 
their officers to aid in the seizure of fugitive slaves, denying the 
use of their jails for the detention or imprisonment of fugitives, 
ordering their courts to provide jury trials for all negroes seized 
in the state, and generally annulling the provisions of the Fugi- 
tive-Slave Law of 1850. When the fugitive Anthony Burns 
was arrested in Boston in 1854, a "mob," in which were some 
of the most prominent authors, preachers, and philanthropists of 
the city, attempted to rescue him by battering down the doors 
of the jail. He had to be escorted to the wharf by battalions 
of United States artillery and marines, through streets cleared 
by the cavalry and lined with 50,000 hooting, hissing, jeering, 
groaning men, under windows draped in mourning and hung 
with the American flag bordered with black. It cost the United 
States government ^40,000 to return Anthony Burns to his 
Virginia master. 

The political effect of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 552. The 
was no less remarkable than the moral effect, for it led directly the^-^"S°* 
to the formation of a new and powerful party. The Whigs, P^^y 
although badly beaten by Pierce in the election of 1852, had 
nevertheless sent over 60 members to Congress. A majority 
of the Southern Whigs voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 
while every single one of the 45 Northern Whigs voted against 
it. This vote showed that the old Whig party was hopelessly 
split by the slavery issue into a Northern and a Southern wing. 
The proslavery Whigs of the South gradually went over to the 
Democratic party, until by the end of 1855 there were only 
the mere remnants of the once powerful Whig party south of 
the Potomac.^ The South then became (and has remained till 
now) a "solid" Democratic South. At the North the Whigs were 
stronger, but the Northern Whigs alone could not hope either to 

1 The process of the dissolution of the Whig party in the South began when 
thousands deserted Scott for Pierce in the presidential election of 1852, fearing 
that Scott was "tinged with Free-Soil principles." The vote on the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill completed the process. 



386 



The Crisis of Disunion 



563. Forma- 
tion of the 
new Repub- 
lican party, 
July, 1854 



^ — would join them in making a great new Whig-Unionist 
But they were mistaken. Most of the Northern Demo- 



control Congress ox to elect a President. They were overwhelm- 
ingly opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, as we have seen, and 
hoped that the other Anti-Nebraska men of the North — the 
Free-Soilers, the Know-Nothings,^ and the Anti-Nebraska Demo- 
crats 
party 

crats were skillfully rallied to the party standards by the incom- 
parable activity of Douglas ; while the Free-Soil men had no 
intention of subordinating the one great issue of slavery to the 
questions of high tariff, internal improvements, a national bank, 
or any other doctrine of the Whig platform. If the Anti- 
Nebraska Whigs wished to see a united North, they them- 
selves would be forced to come into the new party which 
was already gathering the determined antislavery men out of 
every political camp. 

This new party was formed at Jackson, Michigan, a few 
weeks after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, in re- 
sponse to a call for a state mass meeting of all men opposed 
to the extension of slavery (July 6, 1854). No hall was large 
enough to hold the immense gathering, which adjourned to a 
grove of oaks on the outskirts of the town. Amid great 
enthusiasm the meeting declared that slavery was a great 
" moral, social, and political evil," demanded the repeal of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Act and of the Fugitive-Slave Law of 1850, 
and resolved that " postponing all differences with regard to 
political economy or administrative policy," they would "act 
cordially and faithfully in unison " until the contest with slavery 



1 The Know-Nothing party was the most curious development in our politi- 
cal life. It originated in 1852 as a protest against foreign (especially Roman 
Catholic) influence in our politics. It was more like a lodge, or secret order, 
than a political party. The chaos in the old Whig and Democratic parties pro- 
duced by the Kansas-Nebraska agitation drove thousands into the ranks of the 
Know-Nothings simply because they had no other place to go to. Thus that queer 
secret society actually carried several states in the elections of 1854 and 1855, 
and gained a momentary political significance far beyond its real importance. 

2 The 86 Northern Democrats in the House had been almost evenly divided 
on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, — 44 for it, 42 against it. 



Approaching the Crisis 387 

was ended. They adopted the name " Republican," ^ nominated 
an entire state ticket, and invited other states to follow them. 
State after state responded, organizing the Anti-Nebraska forces 
into the Republican party, until at the close of 1855 the chair- 
men of the Republican committees in Ohio, Massachusetts, Ver- 
mont, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin issued a call for a national 
Republican convention to be held at Pittsburg on February 22, 
1856, for the purpose of organizing a national Republican 
party and appointing a time and place for nominating a presi- 
dential candidate. From this convention the Republican party 
issued full-grown. 

The formation of the Republican party was a direct result of 564. Mistake 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The party was really rousing the 
called into existence by Stephen A. Douglas, who, as we shall g^frit^of^'^'e 
see later, had cause bitterly to regret his blunder in conjuring North 
up the antislavery spirit of the North. There was no good rea- 
son in the year 1854 for disturbing the compromise agreed on in 
1850. On the basis of that compromise the Democratic party 
had achieved an overwhelming success at the polls in 1852, the 
Southern states had declared their continued adherence to the 
Union, and commercial and industrial prosperity was general. 
One might confidently have prophesied, at the opening of the " 
year 1854, a long and undisturbed tenure of power for the 
Democratic party. At the end of that year the country was in 
a ferment. The Democratic majority of 84 in the House had 
been changed to a minority of 7 5 . A new party had been formed 
which in a few years was to defeat the Democrats both of the 
North and of the South and give the death blow to the insti- 
tution of slavery, to which the Kansas-Nebraska Act had 
seemed to open new and promising territory. 

1 The organization and the name had both been suggested by an antislavery 
meeting at Ripon, Wisconsin, before the Kansas-Nebraska Bill had passed. 



388 The Crisis of Disunion 

'' Bleeding Kansas " 

565. The V When the Kansas-Nebraska Bill became law, Douglas boasted 
Aid Society that " the Struggle over slavery was forever banished from the 
halls of Congress to the Western plains." He was mistaken 
about its being banished from the halls of Congress, but right 
about its reaching the Western plains. While the bill was still 
pending, a group of determined Free-Soilers in Massachusetts 
resolved that if the question of slavery was to be left to the 
settlers of Kansas, then Kansas should be settled by antislavery 
men. Accordingly, at the suggestion of Eli Thayer of Worces- 
ter, they formed the New England Emigrant Aid Society, whose 
object was to conduct companies of emigrants to the new 
territories, and help them with loans for the erection of houses 
and the cultivation of farms. The first colony, some thirty 
men and women, arrived in Kansas in the summer of 1854. 
By March, 1855, several hundred emigrants had come, and 
were busy building the town of Lawrence,^ on the Kansas 
River. In less than three months over fifty dwellings were 
built, a hotel and public buildings were started, and Lawrence 
had taken on the aspect of a thriving New England town. 
506. The This attempt to " abolitionize Kansas" exasperated the South, 

"invade" and above all the neighboring state of Missouri. It was from 
Missouri especially that the demand had come for the organi- 
zation of the new territory. The Missourians confidently ex- 
pected to make it eventually a slaveholding state. But this 
inrush of Free-Soil emigrants from New England was spoiling 
the plan. The Missourians called the emigrants ^' an army of 
hirelings," " reckless and desperate fanatics," who " had none of 
the purpose of the real pioneers," but were clothed and fed, as 

1 The town was named after A. A. Lawrence, a noted merchant and philan- 
thropist of Boston, who was one of the chief supporters of the Emigrant Aid 
Society. John Greenleaf Whittier, the abolitionist poet, gave the colonists their 
inarching song : 

We cross the prairie as of old the pilgrims crossed the sea, 

To make the West, as they the East, the homestead of the free 1 



Kansas 



Approaching the Crisis 389 

they were transported, by abolitionist '' meddlers " of the North, 
who wanted to prevent a fair and natural settlement of Kansas. 
Accordingly large bands of armed men were organized in the 
border counties of Missouri for the purpose of crossing into 
Kansas and terrorizing the Free-Soil settlers. 

These " border ruffians " from Missouri swarmed into the 567. They 
Kansas territory whenever elections were held. Their thou- slavery ^legis- 
sands of fraudulent votes elected a proslavery delegate to jJ^^J? ^° ^^® 
Congress in the autumn of 1854, and the next spring, on the March 30, 
day set by the governor for the election of a territorial legisla- 
ture (March 30, 1855), ''an unkempt, sundried, blatant, pictur- 
esque mob" of 5000 Missourians marched to the polls. Over 
three fourths of the votes were cast by these Missourian 
" invaders," and the legislature which they elected was decid- 
edly proslavery. It ignored Governor Reeder's remonstrances, 
removed its meeting place to a point near the Missouri border, 
and proceeded to enact a code of laws for the territory, by 
which the severest penalties were decreed against any one who 
attempted to aid slaves to escape or even spoke or wrote of 
slavery as illegal in the territory. This high-handed conduct of 
the Missourians was applauded by the South generally, and 
companies of volunteers from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, 
and Georgia marched to Kansas to join the Missourians in 
the battle " for slavery and the South." 

A wave of indignation ran through the North. " It has 568. The 
lately been maintained by the sharp logic of the revolver and governmeirt 
the bowie knife that the people of Missouri are the people of ^^ Topeka, 
Kansas," cried Edward Everett of Massachusetts in a stirring 
oration on the Fourth of July, 1855. The Free-Soil emigrants 
in Kansas, who now numbered over 3000, refused to recognize 
the legislature elected by the " border ruffians " from Missouri. 
Their delegates met at Topeka, organized an antislavery govern- 
ment, and, following the example of California six years earlier, 
applied to Congress for immediate admission to the Union as 
& free state. 



390 



The Crisis of Distinion 



569. Civil 
War in Kan- 
sas, 1855-1856 



In the spring of 1856, then, there were two hostile govern- 
ments facing each other in Kansas, each charging the other 
with fraud and violence. The Free-Soil party was determined 
that Kansas should not be sacrificed to the slave interests of 
Missouri. " If slavery in Missouri is impossible with freedom 
in Kansas," said their leader, Robinson, " then slavery in 
Missouri must die that freedom in Kansas may live." The 
proslavery men, on the other hand, declared that they would 
win Kansas, though they had to wade in blood to their knees. 




Civil War in Kansas, 1855-1857 



570. The 
sack of Law- 
rence, May 
a I, 1856 



It was inevitable that deeds of violence should occur under 
such circumstances. The Missourian invaders were always 
armed to the teeth, and quantities of Sharpe's rifles had been 
sent out from the North for the defense of freedom in Kansas. 
The Free-Soilers fortified their capital, Lawrence, by earthworks, 
and planted a cannon in the town. It needed only the spark 
to start the conflagration. That was furnished by the attempt 
of a sheriff to serve a warrant for arrest on a citizen in Law- 
rence. An assassin shot the sheriff in the back, severely 
wounding him. The Free-Soil authorities (who were making 
every effort to avert deeds of violence) denounced the act and 



Approaching the Crisis 391 

offeied a reward for the capture of the assassin. But the 

deed was done. The Missourians gathered '' to wipe out 

Lawrence." They attacked the town on the twenty-first of May, 

1856, destroyed the public buildings, the Free State Hotel, and 

the printing offices of the abolitionist papers, sacked and burned 

private dwellings, and retired, leaving the citizens destitute 

and desperate. 

The sack of Lawrence was frightfully avenged three days 571. John 

later. John Brown, an old man of the stock of the Puritans, murder/ on 

with the Puritan idea that he was appointed by God to smite the Potta- 

^^ •' watomie, 

His enemies, led a small band of men (including his four sons) May 24, 1856 

to a proslavery settlement on the banks of Pottawatomie Creek, 
and there dragging five men from their beds at dead of night, 
massacred ,them in cold blood. Thenceforward there was war 
in Kansas when Free-Soilers met proslavery men. The dis- 
tracted territory was given over to feud and violence. " Bitter 
remembrances filled each man's mind," wrote an Englishman 
who traveled through Kansas at this time, " and impelled to 
daily acts of hostility and not unfrequent bloodshed." '' Bleed- 
ing Kansas " became the topic of the hour throughout the North. 

It was folly in the administration at Washington to think that 572. How 
it could still hold to the doctrine of nonintervention in the ter- pierce dealt 
ritories when civil war was going on in Kansas. President ^^^^^^g^® 
Pierce ignored the situation as long as he could, declaring in his situation 
message of December, 1855 (when a force of 1500 Missourians 
was already encamped on the Wakarusa River, waiting to attack 
Lawrence), that there had been disorderly acts in Kansas but 
that nothing had occurred as yet " to justify the interposition of 
the federal executive." The next month, however. Pierce sent 
a special message to Congress, in which he took sides squarely 
with the proslavery party in Kansas. He did not deny that 
there might have been '' irregularities " in the election of the 
territorial legislature, but he recognized that legislature as the 
lawful one and declared his intention of supporting it with all 
the authority of the United States. The message plainly shows 



392 The Crisis of Disunion 

the hand of the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis of Missis- 
sippi, who controlled the administration of President Pierce. 

It was folly also in Douglas to think that the slavery ques- 
tion could be "' banished from the halls of Congress " by the 
gress Kansas-Nebraska Act. The very passage of that act, as we have 

seen, had caused the election of enough Anti-Nebraska men to 
Congress in 1854 to change a large Democratic majority into a 
minority. After a contest of two months the House elected an 
Anti-Nebraska man, N. P. Banks of Massachusetts, as Speaker, 
and " Bleeding Kansas " became the issue of the session. 
Banks appointed a committee of three to proceed to Kansas 
and investigate the condition of the territory. Every new report 
of violence furnished the text for stirring orations. 

On the twentieth of May Charles Sumner of Massachusetts 
delivered a speech in the Senate on " The Crime against 
Kansas," which was the most unsparing philippic ever pro- 
nounced in Congress. Sumner lashed the slaveholders with a 
tongue of venom. He spared neither coarse abuse nor scathing 
sarcasm. He attacked by name the instigators of the " mur- 
derous robbers from Missouri," the '' hirelings picked from the 
drunken spew and vomit of civilization." He poured out his 
vials of scornful insult upon the heads of the slave-driving 
" aristocrats " of the South, until even the masters of invective 
on the floor of the Senate stared aghast at his furious courage. 
574. Brooks's Among the senators especially singled out for Sumner's 
Sumner,^May shafts was A. P. Butler of South Carolina, who was ill and 
22, 1856 absent from Washington at the time of the speech. Two days 

later Preston Brooks, a representative from South Carolina and 
a relative of Senator Butler, entered the Senate chamber late in 
the afternoon, when Sumner was bending over his desk at work, 
and beat him almost to death with a heavy gutta-percha cane.^ 

1 Sumner, when he had sufficiently recovered from the shock of this terrible 
beating, went to Europe for treatment at the hands of the most distinguished 
specialists. He was able to resume his seat in the Senate (which had been kept 
vacant for him) in 1859, but he never recovered his old-time brilliancy. His death, 
in 1875, was due to the effects of the injuries administered by Brooks. 



Approaching the Crisis 393 

Sumner's speech had been outrageous, but Brooks's attack was 
unspeakably base and cowardly. The motion to expel Brooks 
from Congress failed of the necessary two-thirds vote, owing to 
the support given him by the Southern members, and when he 
resigned shortly afterwards, he was immediately reelected by 
the almost unanimous voice of his district in South Carolina. 

Sumner's speech, the attack of Brooks, the sack of Lawrence, 575. The Re- 
and the massacre on the Pottawatomie all occurred within vention at 
the five days, May 19-24, 1856. These events were a sad P^^ia<ieiphia, 
commentary on " popular sovereignty " in Kansas, and a sinister 
omen for the approaching presidential campaign. The Repub- 
lican nominating convention arranged for at Pittsburg met at 
Philadelphia, June 17, the anniversary of the battle of Bunker 
Hill. The platform adopted declared that it was " both the 
right and the duty of Congress " to prohibit slavery in the 
territories. It condemned the policy of the administration in 
Kansas, denounced the Ostend Manifesto, and demanded the 
immediate admission of Kansas as a free state. Chase and 
Seward, the leading men of the party, were both passed over 
on account of their former prominence in the Democratic and 
the Whig party respectively ; and John C. Fre'mont, of California, 
" the Pathfinder," renowned for his explorations and his military 
services in the Far West (see p. 352), was nominated for 
President, with Dayton of New Jersey for Vice President. 

The selection of both of the candidates from free states 576. Threats 
was in the eyes of the South a proof of the sectional character JromThr^^ 
of the Republican party — the ''Black Republicans," as the South 
Southerners called them on account of their interest in the 
negro. From all over the South came threats that Fre'mont's 
election would mean the end of the Union. " The Southern 
states," wrote Governor Wise of Virginia, '' will not submit 
to a sectional election of a Free-Soiler or Black Republican. 
... If Fre'mont is elected this Union will not last one year 
from November next. . . . The country was never in such 
danger." 



394 



The Crisis of Diswiioii 



577. The 
pacification of 
Kansas and 
the election of 
Buchanan, 
November, 
1856 



The Democrats too passed over their great leader, Stephen 
A. Douglas, and nominated James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, 
a dignified, formal, mediocre gentleman, who was especially 
" available " because he had been absent in England as minister 
during the Kansas struggle. The Democrats realized that the 
pacification of Kansas was the most important element of their 
success in the approaching election. Every fresh deed of vio- 
lence reported 
from the terri- 
tory was mak- 
ing thousands 
of Republican 
converts. Dem- 
ocratic party 
leaders vainly 
tried to get 
Congress to pass 
the Toombs bill 
in midsummer, 
providing for 
a new census 
in Kansas and 
the election of 
a territorial con- 
vention under 
supervision of 
five commis- 




The Election of 1856 
The first Republican campaign 



sioners appointed by the President. But the Republicans had 
had their experience of Pierce and were not willing to let him 
choose the umpires for the Kansas elections.^ Failing in Con- 
gress, the Democrats appealed to the executive to interpose in 

1 Douglas angrily accused the Republicans of wanting to keep the civil war 
alive in Kansas, for the sake of winning votes. " An angel from heaven," he 
declared, " could not write a bill to restore peace in Kansas that would be 
acceptable to the abolition Republican party previous to the next presidential 
election." 



Approaching the Crisis 395 

Kansas, and Pierce sent out a new governor (the third in two 
years), Geary of Pennsylvania, with authority to use the United 
States troops to restore order. Geary drove the Missourian in- 
vaders out and stanched the wounds of bleeding Kansas (Sep- 
tember, 1856). The election was saved for the Democrats. 
Buchanan carried all the slave states (except Maryland), besides 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, and California. 
His electoral vote was 174 to 114 for Fre'mont. 

The whole conservative element of the country was relieved 578. signifi 
by the result of the election. Buchanan was deemed a '^ safe " ekctlon of ^ 
man, while the erratic, popular Fremont, backed by the ^^56 
abolitionists of the North, might have precipitated a crisis, even 
if the Southern states repented of their threats of disunion in 
case of his election. Still the new Republican party, in its first 
presidential campaign, with a comparatively weak candidate at 
that, had made a remarkable fight. It had carried eleven states 
and polled 1,341,264 votes to 1,838,169 for Buchanan. With 
an enthusiasm as great as that with which, in the summer's 
campaign, they had shouted, '^ Free speech, free press, free soil, 
Fre-vi\ovX and Victory ! " the Republicans now closed their 
ranks, and entered on the next four years' campaign with the 
battle song of Whittier, the bard of freedom, ringing in their 

ears : 

Then sound again the bugles, 

Call the muster-roll anew ; 
If months have well-nigh won the field, 
What may not four years ^o ? 

''A House divided against Itself" 

Buchanan's election gave promise of peace. Order had been 579. The 
restored in Kansas by the intervention of the United States JaS^n^ls'se 
troops, and the danger of an '' abolitionist " president averted. 
The country was on a flood tide of material prosperity (see p- 367). 
The national debt, which stood at $68,000,000 in 1850, had 
been reduced to less than $30,000,000. The Walker tariff of 



396 The Crisis of Disunion 

1846, though moderate, was bringing into the Treasury so large 
a surplus that a new tariff bill was passed without opposition 
in the last month of Pierce's term (February, 1857), reducing 
the rates by from 20 to 50 per cent. If only the persistent 
slavery agitation could have been put to rest, the land and the 
people of America would have been the happiest on the face 
of the earth. 

580. Buchan- Buchanan was sincerely anxious for harmony. He selected 
tion three Northern and four Southern men for his cabinet, with the 

veteran author of the popular-sovereignty doctrine, Lewis Cass, 
for the leading position of Secretary of State. He declared in 
his inaugural address that he owed his election '' to the inherent 
love for the Constitution and the Union which still animates the 
hearts of the American people," and expressed the hope that the 
long agitation on slavery was now " approaching its end." But 
before the echoes of the inaugural speech had died away, an event 
occurred which again roused the indignation of the antislavery 
men of the North, and won thousands more to the conviction 
that the sections of our country could not dwell together in har- 
mony until slavery was either banished from our soil or ex- 
tended to every part of the Union. This event was the Dred 
Scott decision of the Supreme Court, delivered March 6, 1857. 

581. The Dred Scott, a negro slave belonging to a man in Missouri, 
decision^ had been taken by his master into free territory in the North- 
March 6, west and brought back again to Missouri. Some years later he 

sued his master's widow for his freedom, on the ground that 
residence in a free territory had emancipated him. The case 
reached the highest court of Missouri, which pronounced against 
Scott's claim. Meanwhile he had come into the possession of a 
New Yorker named Sandford, and again sued for his freedom 
in the United States circuit court of Missouri.^ The federal 
court rendered the same decision as the state court, and Dred's 

1 When a citizen of one state sues a citizen of another state, the case is 
tried in a federal, or United States, court. Of course, the negro slave, Dred 
Scott, did not initiate this case himself. It was managed by antislavery men in 
Missouri who wished to test the position of the courts on the subject of slavery. 



V 

Approaching the Crisis 397 

patrons appealed the case to the Supreme Court of the United 
States. The only question before the Supreme Court was whether 
it should sustain the decision of the federal court in Missouri 
or reverse it. But after the decision was made, denying that 
the United States circuit court had any jurisdiction in the case, 
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Roger B. Taney of 
Maryland, who had been appointed by President Jackson on 
the death of John Marshall in 1835, went on to deliver a long 
opinion ^ on the status of the negro. The negro was not a citi- 
zen, he declared, in the eyes of the Constitution of the United 
States. That Constitution was made for white men only. The 
blacks, at the time of its adoption, were regarded as ''so far 
inferior that they had no rights which the white man was 
bound to respect." Not being a citizen, the negro could not sue 
in a court of the United States. The slave was the property of 
his owner, and the national government was nowhere given 
power over the property of the inhabitants of the states of the 
Union ; neither could it discriminate between the citizens of the 
several states as to their property rights. 

The Southerners were jubilant. At last the extreme pro- 582. impor- 
slavery doctrine of Calhoun and Davis (note, p. 353) was decSon*^^ 
recognized by the federal power at Washington, and by the 
most august branch of that power, the Supreme Court of the 
United States. " The nation has achieved a triumph ; sectional- 
ism has been rebuked and abolitionism has been staggered and 
stunned," said a Richmond paper. But the Northern press 
spoke of '' sullied ermine " and " judicial robes polluted in 
the filth of proslavery politics." " The people of the United 
States," cried Seward, " never can and never will accept 
principles so abhorrent." 

Flushed with their victory in the Dred Scott case, the ex- 533. The Le- 
treme proslavery men made still further demands on the national gtitution^^^' 
government. Buchanan had sent a fair and able governor to i>ec. 21, 1857 

1 An opinion expressed by a judge beyond what is called for in the actual case 
is called obiter dictum^ a Latin phrase meaning literally " spoken by the way." 



398 The Crisis of Disunion 

succeed Geary in Kansas, in the person of Robert J. Walker of 
Mississippi, ex-Secretary of the Treasury. Under Walker's call 
a convention met at Lecompton, Kansas, in September, 1857, to 
frame a constitution for the territory. The Free-Soil men refused 
to attend the convention, remembering the frauds of the earlier 
elections, but they were persuaded by Walker's good faith to 
take part in the elections for a territorial legislature in October, 
• and succeeded in returning a majority of Free-Soil members. 
When the proslavery convention in session at Lecompton saw- 
that the Free-Soil men would control the legislature of the terri- 
^ tory, they determined to force a proslavery constitution on 

Kansas by fraud. They drew up a constitution in which the 
protection of all the existing slave property in Kansas was 
guaranteed, and then submitted it to the vote of the people to 
be adopted ivith slaveiy or without slavefj. Whichever way the 
people voted, there would be slavery in Kansas ; for a vote for 
" the constitution with slavery " meant that more slaveholders 
would be admitted, while a vote for " the constitution without 
slavery " meant that no more slaveholders would be admitted, 
but that those who w^ere already there would be protected in 
their property. The Free-Soil men denounced the fraud, and de- 
manded that the vote should be simply Yes or No on the whole 
Lecompton Constitution. They stayed away from the polls, 
and the proslavery people adopted the " constitution with 
slavery," casting in all 6700 votes (December 21, 1857). Two 
weeks later, the Free-Soil legislature put the Lecompton Con- 
stitution as a whole before the people, and the free-soil citizens 
rejected it by a vote of over 10,000. It was clear enough that 
the majority of the inhabitants of Kansas did not want slavery. 
584. The When the news of the affair of the Lecompton Constitution 

Constitution came to Buchanan's first Congress, assembled in December, 
1857, Douglas immediately protested against the fraud as a 
violation of the principle of popular sovereignty, on which the 
territory was organized. The people of Kansas, he insisted, 
must be allowed to vote fairly on the question of slavery or no 



before Con- 
gress. The 



Approaching the Crisis 399 

slavery in the territory. A new convention must be called, and 
a new constitution submitted. But the Southerners were bound 
to have the Lecompton Constitution stand. They won the 
President to their side, and in February, 1858, in spite of the 
10,000 majority against the constitution in Kansas a month 
before, Buchanan sent the Lecompton Constitution to the Senate 
with the recommendation that Kansas be admitted as a state 
under its provisions. Douglas was firm. He defied the admin- 
istration, rebuked President Buchanan to his face, and labored 
with might and main to defeat the bill. The South assailed him 
as a '^ traitor " and a " renegade " and a " Judas," — the very 
epithets with which he had been branded in the North four 
years earlier. In spite of his efforts, the bill was passed by the 
Senate (33 to 25), Douglas voting in the negative with the Repub- 
licans Sumner, Chase, Wade, Hale, and Seward, whom he had so 
unmercifully handled in the debate over the Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill. The House defeated the bill to admit Kansas, and after a 
conference the Senate agreed to submit the Lecompton Consti- 
tution again to the people of the territory, who again rejected 
it by the decisive vote of 11,000 to 2000.-^ 

Douglas's second term in the United States Senate was about 585. Douglas 
to expire, and he returned to Illinois in the summer of 1858 to rh^is^ for the 

make the canvass for his reelection, in dissrrace with the admin- senatorship 

' ^ in 1858 

istration and in some private embarrassment.^ His Republican 

rival for the senatorship was Abraham Lincoln. The two men 

had known each other for twenty years. They were both alike 

in being poor farmers' sons, who had come into the growing 

state of Illinois as young men and engaged there in the practice 

of law. They were alike, too, in their intense ambition to make 

a name for themselves in politics. But here the resemblance 

ceased. While Douglas had been phenomenally successful, a 

1 In 1861 Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. 

2 A great part of Douglas's fortune had been swept away by a severe financial 
panic which came upon the country in 1857, as the result of overconfidence in 
the prosperity of the early fifties and too sanguine investments in Western farms 
and railways. 



400 



The Crisis of Disunion 



586. Lin- 
coln's posi- 
tion on 
slavery 



587. The 
Lincoln - 
Douglas de- 
bates, 1858 



national figure in the United States Senate for over a decade, 
and twice a serious competitor for the Democratic presidential 
nomination, Lincoln's national honors had been limited to one 
inconspicuous term as a Whig member of Congress and no 
votes for the vice-presidential nominatibn in the Republican 
convention of 1856. In appearance, temper, and character the 
two men were exact opposites : Lincoln ludicrously tall and 
lanky, awkward, reflective, and slow in speech and motion ; 
Douglas scarcely five feet in height, thickset, agile, volcanic in 
utterance, impetuous in gesture ; Lincoln undeviatingly honest 
in thought, making his speech always the servant of his reason ; 
Douglas, in his brilliancy of rhetoric, often confusing the moral 
principle for the sake of making the legal point. 

Somewhat disheartened by his lack of success, Lincoln was 
losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise again roused him. In a speech at Peoria, Illinois, in 
October, 185 4, he warned Douglas that his doctrine would " bring 
Yankees and Missourians into clash over slavery in Kansas," and 
with prophetic vision asked, "Will not the first drop of blood so 
shed be the knell of the Union ? " He joined the new Republi- 
can party, and soon rose to be its recognized leader in Illinois. 
When the Republican state convention nominated him for the 
senatorship in June, 1858, he addressed the delegates in a mem- 
orable speech: "In my opinion it [the slavery agitation] will not 
cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. A house 
divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government 
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not 
expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to 
fall ; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become 
all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery 
will arrest the further spread of it ... or its advocates will push 
it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states." 

Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates before the 
people of Illinois on the respective merits of the Democratic 
doctrine of popular sovereignty in the territories and the 



Approaching the Crisis 



401 



Republican doctrine of the control of slavery in the territories 
by Congress. The seven remarkable debates which followed in 
various parts of the state were the feature of the campaign. 
In them the prediction of Douglas that the battle of slavery 
would be fought out on the Western plains was fulfilled in a 
way he little suspected when he made it. The contest was not 
merely over a seat in the Senate. It was a great struggle, 
watched with interest by the whole country, between two 
moral and political issues of immense importance : first, whether 
one man might dare say another man is not his equal in the 
right to earn his bread in labor as he sees fit; and second, 

whether the government 



^^~X 



-J5^ 







Tablet marking the Site of the First 
Lincoln-Douglas Debate 



of the United States was 
the servant of the slave 
power or its master. 

In the debate at Free- 588. The 
port, Lincoln's merciless d^trine "^ 
logic brought Douglas 
straight to the point of 
the campaign. The Dred 
Scott decision, which 
Douglas accepted and 
defended, declared it un- 



constitutional for the national government to exclude slavery 
from the territories ; while by the doctrine of popular sovereignty 
Congress conferred on a territory the right to decide the ques- 
tion of slavery for itself. But, asked Lincoln, how could a terri- 
tory forbid slavery when Congress itself could not ? The territory 
was the creation of Congress. Did*it have more power than the 
Congress which created it ? Could water rise above its source ? 
The question brought the answer Lincoln wanted. Douglas 
still defended popular sovereignty, maintaining that legislation 
hostile to slavery by the people of the territory would make the 
territory free soil in spite of the Dred Scott decision. The 
latter was only negative, prohibiting Congress to forbid sXdiWQry ; 



402 The Crisis of Disimion 

the legislation of the people of the territory was positive, estab- 
lishing or prohibiting slavery as they saw fit.^ 
589. The Douglas won the senatorship by the narrow margin of eight 

radicairre- votes. But his " Freeport doctrine " of the power of the people of 
Douglass ^ territory to exclude slavery by " hostile legislation " cost him the 
presidency two years later. The Southern radicals, already in- 
censed by the defeat of the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, 
-now rejected Douglas completely. They demanded that Con- 
gress should interfere positively to protect slavery in the 
territories, even against the hostile legislation of the territory 
itself. " Would you have Congress protect slaves any more than 
any other property in the territories?" asked Douglas of Jefferson 
Davis. " Yes," replied Davis, " because slaves are the only 
property the North will try to take from us in the territories." 
" You will not carry a state north of the Ohio River on such a 
platform," cried Douglas. '' And you could not get the vote of 
Mississippi on yours," answered Davis. The Democratic party 
was hopelessly divided. Douglas had railed at the " abolitionist" 
Republican party as '' sectional." Now he and his followers were 
accused of the same fault by the administration of Buchanan and 
the radical Southern leaders. He woke finally to the realization 
that his efforts to hold the Northern and Southern wings of the 
Democratic party together on the compromise doctrine of pop- 
ular sovereignty were vain. Every concession to the slaveholders 
was only the basis of a new demand. Lincoln was right. The 
house was divided against itself. 

REFERENCES 

The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the Formation of the Repub- 
lican Party: T. C. Smith, Parties and Slavery (American Nation 
Series), chaps, vii, viii; J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States 
from the Compromise of 18^0, Vol. I, chap, v; Vol. II, chap, vii; J. G. 
NicoLAY, Life of Lincoln, chap, vii; Henry Wilson, Rise and Fall of 

1 Lincoln neatly paraphrased this " Freeport doctrine " of Douglas in a speech 
at Columbus a year later : " Then a thing may be legally driven away from a place 
where it has a legal right to be." 



Approaching the Crisis 403 

the Slave Potver, Vol. II, chaps, xxx, xxxi ; J. W. Burgess, The Middle 
Period, chap, xix ; A. B. Hart, American History told by Contemporaries, 
Vol. IV, Nos. 34, 35; H. VON HoLST, Constitutional History of the 
United States, Vol. V, chaps, i, ii ; William MacDonald, Select Docu- 
ments of United States History, jjjb-iSbi, Nos. 85-88; Edward 
Stanwood, History of the P?-esidency, chap, xx ; Allen Johnson, 
Stephen Arjiold Douglas, chaps, xi-xiv. 

" Bleeding Kansas " : Smith, chaps, ix, xi, xii ; Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 
36-39; Rhodes, Vol. II, pp. 98-107, 150-168; Burgess, chap, xx; 
Wilson, Vol. II, chaps, xxxv-xxxvii ; Von Holst, Vol. V, chaps, iii, 
vi, vii; James Schouler, History of the United States, Vol. V, chap, 
xxi ; J. D. Richardson, Papers and Messages of the Presidents, Vol. V, 
PP- 352-360, 390-39I' 401-407. 449-454» 471-481; W. E. B. DuBois, 
John Brow7i, chaps, vi-viii ; Charles Robinson, The Kansas Conflict, 
chaps, v-xiii; L. W. Spring, Kansas, chaps, ii-ix; also The Career of 
a Kansas Politiciajt {American Histo7-ical Review, Vol. IV, pp. 80-104). 

" A House divided against Itself " : Smith, chaps, xiv-xvii ; Burgess, 
chaps, xxi, xxii ; Johnson, chaps, xv-xvii; Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 40-45 ; 
Wilson, Vol. II, chaps, xxxix-xliii; Rhodes, Vol.11, chap, ix; Nicola y, 
chaps, viii, ix; J, T. Morse, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I, chap, v; 
A. Rothschild, Lincoln, Master of Men, chap, iii ; Old South Leaf- 
lets, No. 85;. C. E. Merriam, American Political Theories, chap, vi ; 
MacDonald, Nos. 91, 93; Robinson, chaps, xiv-xvii; Von Holst, 
Vol. VI, chaps, i-vii ; Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Robert B. Taney, 
chap. V ; Horace Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. I, chaps, 
xvii-xix. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Birth of the Republican Party : G. W. Julian, Personal Recol- 
lections, pp. 134-150; Stanwood, pp. 258-278; T. K. Lothrop, 
William H. Seward, pp. 142-161 ; Rhodes, Vol. II, pp. 45-50, 177- 
185; Schouler, Vol. V, pp. 301-308, 349-357; A. C. McLaughlin, 
Lewis Cass, pp. 293-321 ; Francis CurtiS; The Repicblican Party, Vol. I, 
pp. 172-234; Johnson, pp. 260-280. 

2. Industrial Prosperity in the Fifties: Smith, pp. 59-74; E. L. 
BoGART, Economic History of the United States, pp. 206-215, 222-226, 
238-249 ; D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States, pp. 
248-274 ; C. D. Wright, Lndustrial Evolution of the United States, 
pp. 133-142 ; Edward Ingle, Southern Sidelights, pp. 55-66, 88-94 ; 
W. G. Brown, The Lower Soicth in American History, pp. 32-49; 
Rhodes, Vol. HI, pp. 1-56; G. S. Callender, Readings in the Eco- 
nomic History of the United States, pp. 738-793. 



404 The Crisis of Disunion 

3. The Personal-Liberty Laws : Hart, Vol. IV, No. 33 ; Wilson, 
Vol. II, pp. 50-60 ; Von Holst, Vol. V, pp. 65-70 ; Marion G. Mac- 
DouGALL, Fugitive Slaves (Fay House Monographs); T. W. Higgin- 
SON, Cheerful Yesterdays, pp. 132-166; NiCOLAY and Hay, Abraham 
Lincoln, a History, Vol. Ill, pp. 17-34; J. J- Lalor, Cyclopcedia of 
Political Science, Vol. Ill, pp. 162-163. 

4. Criticisms of the Dred Scott Decision : Hart, Vol. IV, No. 43 ; 
Tyler, pp. 373-400; Rhodes, Vol. II, pp. 257-270; G. T. Curtis, 
Memoir of B. R. Curtis, Vol. I, pp. 211-251 ; J. G. Blaine, Tweivty 
Years of Congress, Yo\. I, pp. 131-137 ; Greeley, pp. 255-264; Lalor, 
Vol. I, pp. 838-841. 

5. Antislavery Poems : Lucy" Larcom, Call to Kanzas (Hart, Vol. 
IV, No. 37); William Cullen Bryant, The Prairies, The Call to Arms; 
James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis, The Biglow Papers ; John 
Greenleaf Whittier, Expostulation, The Farewell, Massachusetts to 
ViJ'ginia, The Kansas Emigrants, Burial of Barber^ The Panorama, 
Brown of Ossawatoi7iie. 



CHAPTER XV 
SECESSION 

The Election of Abraham Lincoln 

When the presidential year i860 opened, the antislavery 590. The 
cause seemed to be defeated at every point. There was hardly [^^1°°^ ^^ 
a claim of the South in the contest of forty years since the 
Missouri Compromise of 1820 that had not been yielded by 
the North for the sake of securing peace and preserving the 
Union. Congress, which in 1820 had excluded slavery from 
the larger part of the Western territory of the United States by 
the Missouri Compromise, had by the Compromise of 1850 
substituted the principle of noninterference with slavery in the 
territories, and by the .Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed 
the Missouri Compromise outright. All the territories of the 
United States except Oregon were thenceforth open to slavery. 
A stringent fugitive-slave law had been enacted by Congress 
(1850). The judicial branch of the government had, by the 
Dred Scott decision, joined the legislative branch in sanctioning 
the "peculiar institution " of the South, declaring that Congress 
had no power to interfere with the property (i.e. the slaves) 
of the citizens of any of the states in any part of the Union 
(1857). And finally, the executive branch of the government 
had been inclined, like the legislative and judicial branches, 
to a favorable attitude toward slavery. Not one of the five 
Northern Presidents since Jackson's day (Van Buren, Harrison, 
Fillmore, Pierce, Buchanan) had shown the slightest hostility 
toward slavery while in the White House, and the last two had 
been completely dominated by Jefferson Davis and the other 
radical proslavery statesmen. 

405 



4o6 



The Crisis of Disimton 



In the Southern states the institution of slavery seemed fixed 
beyond any power to disturb it. The slaves had increased from 
2,000,000 in 1820 to nearly 4,000,000 in i860; yet the con- 
stantly increasing demand for cotton in the mills of England 
and the North made the supply of slaves inadequate. The 
same quality of negro that sold for $400 in 1820 brought 
$1200 to $1500 in i860. Why pay $1500 apiece in Virginia 
for slaves that could be bought for $600 in Cuba, and for less 
than $100 in Africa? said the Mississippi planter. A conven- 
tion of the cotton-raising states at Vicksburg in May, 1859, 
carried by a vote of 40 to 19 the resolution that ''all laws, 
state or federal, prohibiting the African slave trade ought to be 
repealed." Cargoes of slaves were landed at Southern ports in 
almost open defiance of the law of 1807 prohibiting the foreign 
slave trade. ^ 

The slight opposition to slavery and to the strict laws for 
the coercion of the negro that still existed in the South was 
killed by an unfortunate event in the autumn of 1859. John 
Brown, whose fanatical deed of murder in Kansas we have 
already described (p. 391), felt that he was commissioned by 
God to free the slaves in the South. He conceived the wild plan 
of posting in the fastnesses of the Appalachian Mountains 
small bodies of armed men, who should make descents into the 
plains, seize negroes, and conduct them back to his " camps of 
freedom." He made a beginning at the little Virginia town of 
Harpers Ferry, at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah 
rivers, where with only eighteen men he seized the United 

1 In 1859 the yacht Wanderer landed 300 slaves, brought direct from the 
African coast, at Brunswick, Georgia. They were distributed as far as Memphis, 
Tennessee. The owner and the captain of the vessel were indicted on a charge of 
breaking the federal law of 1807, but no Southern jury could be found to convict 
them, and they went free. Douglas said that 15,000 slaves were imported in the 
last years of the decade 1S50-1860. What a contrast to the attitude of Thomas 
Jefferson, who wrote in his presidential message of December, 1806, " I con- 
gratulate you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may 
[prohibit] all further violations of human rights, which have so long been con- 
tinued on the unoffending inhabitant of Africa, and which the morality, the 
reputation, and the best interests of our country have long been eager to proscribe." 



Secession 



407 



States armory, and, raiding the houses of a few of the neigh- 
boring planters, forcibly freed about thirty of their slaves. 
There was no response on the part of the negroes to John 
Brown's raid in their behalf. They were huddled together with 
his men in the armory, rather bewildered, and more like captives 
than newly baptized freemen, when a detachment of United 








United States Marines storming the Arsenal at Harpers P'erry 



States marines from Washington arrived on the scene and cap- 
tured Brown's band after a short, sharp struggle (October 17, * 
1859). Brown, severely wounded, was tried for treason by the 
laws of Virginia. He pleaded only his divine commission for 
his defense, and was speedily condemned and hanged. 

The South was persuaded that John Brown's attempt to in- 593. Effect 
cite the negroes to revolt was backed by influential men at the °° ^^® ^°^*^ 
North, especially when Brown was hailed as a martyr by thou- 
sands of antislavery men who were jubilant to see a blow 



4o8 The Crisis of Disunion 

struck for freedom, even if itVere a murderous blow.^ From 
the day of John Brown's raid many thousands in the South 
were persuaded that the '' Black Republicans " were deter- 
mined to let loose upon their wives and children- the horrors 
of negro massacre. 

Early in February, i860, Jefferson Davis brought into the 
Senate a set of resolutions containing the demands of the South. 
Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty was entirely repu- 
diated. Congress must protect slavery in every part of the terri- 
tory of the United States ; for the territories were the common 
possession of the states of the Union, open to the citizens of all 
the states with all their property. The Northern states must 
repeal their Personal-Liberty laws, and cease to interfere with 
the thoroughgoing execution of the Fugitive-Slave Law of 1850. 
j The Dred Scott decision must be respected, and no attempt 
/ be made by Congress to trespass on the exclusive right of the 
^ states to regulate slavery for themselves. These extreme pro- 
slavery resolutions, which demanded everything but the actual 
introduction of slavery into the free states of the North, were 
intended as a platform for the Democratic party in the approach- 
ing convention for the choice of a presidential candidate. 
595. Lin- At the close of the same month of February, i860, Abraham 

in the Copper Lincoln, at the invitation of the Republicans of the Eastern 
states, delivered a notable speech in the hall of the Cooper 
Union, New York City. Since the debates with Douglas in 
1858, Lincoln had been recognized in the West as the leading 
man of the Republican party, but before the Cooper Union 
speech the East did not accord him a place beside Seward and 

1 The tense feeling in the North led many men of note to indorse John 
Brown's deed in words of extravagant praise. Theodore Parker declared that 
his chances for earthly immortality were double those of any other man of the 
century ; and Ralph Waldo Emerson even compared the hanging of John Brown 
with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The funds and firearms for Brown's expe- 
dition of course came from the North, but the men who contributed them (with 
perhaps one or two exceptions) thought they were to be used in Kansas and not 
for a raid in the state of Virginia. John Brown's deed at Harpers Ferry, like 
his deed at the Pottawatomie, deserves only condemnation. 



Union, Febru- 



Secession 409 

Sumner. His clothes were ill-fitting, his voice was high and 
thin, his gestures were awkward as he stood before the cultured 
audience of New York ; but all these things were forgotten as 
he proceeded with accurate historical knowledge, keen argu- 
ment, lucid exposition, and great charity to expound the posi- 
tion of the Republican party on the issue of slavery. He 
showed that a majority of the signers of the Declaration of 
Independence had voted for the restriction of slavery ; that 
Congress had repeatedly legislated to control slavery in the 
territories of the United States, and that the South had accepted 
and even voted for the laws ; that no particle of proof could 
be adduced to show that the Republican party or any member 
of it had anything to do with John Brown's raid at Harpers 
Ferry ; that the talk of the Southerners about the disasters 
which the election of a Republican president would bring upon 
them was the product of their own imagination ; and that the 
threats of the South to break up the Union in case of such 
an election were simply the argument of the highway robber. 
He concluded by a ringing appeal to the men of the North to 
stand by their principles in the belief that right makes might. 
The speech was not a formal reply to Davis's resolutions, but it 
served as such. It was a clear statement of the Republican 
doctrine that, in spite of the opinion of Chief Justice Taney, 
Congress had full power to prohibit slavery in the territories. 
The speech made Lincoln a serious candidate for the Repub- 
lican nomination for President. 

The great conventions of i860, which were to nominate 595. The 
candidates for the most important presidential election in our democratic 

history, began with the meeting of the Democratic delegates at convention at 

, / ^ , ^ ^ Charleston, 

Charleston, South Carohna, April 23. It was evident that the April, i860 

struggle in the Democratic convention would be between the 
Douglas men and the supporters of the Davis resolutions. The 
Douglas platform won by a margin of about thirty votes, where- 
upon the Alabama delegation, led by William L. Yancey, for ten 
years an ardent advocate of secession, marched out of the hall. 



4IO The Crisis of Disunion 

The Alabama delegates were followed by those of five other 
cotton states, the chairmen of these delegations bidding their 
fellow Democrats farewell " in valedictories which seemed ad- 
dressed less to the convention than to the Union." Glenn of 
Mississippi, pale with suppressed emotion, declared, " In sixty 
days you will see a united South standing shoulder to shoulder ! " 

In refusing to abide by the vote of the regular Democratic 
convention supporting Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty 
(which of course meant the nomination of Douglas for President), 
the extreme proslavery men of the South deliberately split the 
Democratic party and thereby made probable the election of 
the Republican candidate. It was the defiant deed of men 
who were determined to listen to no further discussion of their 
demands for the recognition of slavery as a rights — a moral, 
social, and political right. Alexander Stephens of Georgia, per- 
haps the ablest statesman of the South, said that within a 
twelvemonth of the disruption of the Democratic convention 
at Charleston the nation would be engaged in a bloody civil 
war. And so it was. 

The two wings of the Democratic party reassembled in June 
at Baltimore. The " regulars " nominated Douglas, and the rad- 
ical proslavery "bolters" nominated John C. Breckinridge of 
Kentucky, Vice President during Buchanan's term. 

Meanwhile the Republican convention had met in Chicago 
(May 1 6) in a huge structure called the ''Wigwam." Ten 
Chicago, May thousand people packed the building, while outside tens of 
thousands more were breathlessly waiting in hopes to hear that 
the favorite son of the West, " honest Abe " Lincoln, the '' rail- 
splitter," had been chosen to lead the party to victory. The 
delegates adopted a platform asserting the right and duty of 
Congress to prohibit the further spread of slavery into the 
territories of the United States. They condemned Buchanan's 
administration for its encouragement of the Lecompton fraud, 
demanded the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state, 
and denounced the opinion of Taney in the Dred Scott case. 



Secession 4 1 1 

When the convention met, Senator Seward of New York 598. The 
was considered the leading candidate for the Republican nomi- Abraham 
nation, which he himself confidently expected. Other aspirants ^^^coin 
for the honor were Chase of Ohio, Bates of Missouri, Cameron 
of Pennsylvania, Smith of Indiana, and Lincoln of Illinois. 
Seward led on the first ballot, but he could not command the 
233 votes necessary for nomination. He was suspected in 
some states of being intimately allied with the abolitionists, 
and in others of being too closely connected with the political 
machine in New York state. His vote remained nearly sta- 
tionary, while delegation after delegation went over to Lincoln. 
On the third ballot Lincoln was nominated and the convention 
went wild. Pandemonium reigned within the hall, while cannon 
boomed without. Men shouted and danced and marched and 
sang. They hugged and kissed each other, they wept, they 
fainted for joy. Seward, although his friends were stunned 
with disappointment, showed his nobility of character and his 
devotion to the Republican cause by an instant and hearty 
support of Abraham Lincoln.-^ 

There was a fourth ticket in the field, headed by John Bell 599. The 
of Tennessee and supported by the old Whigs and Union men tionai Umon 
in the South, especially in the border states. Their platform "^^^^ 
was silent on the subject of slavery, simply declaring '' for the 
maintenance of the Union and the Constitution, and the 
enforcement of the laws." 

In the election on the sixth of November Lincoln carried all 600. Lin- 
the Northern states except New Jersey, receiving 180 electoral tion,Novem- 
votes. Douglas got only 1 2 electoral votes, from Missouri and ^^'^ ^' ^^^° 
New Jersey. Bell carried Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia, 
with 39 votes. And Breckinridge got the 72 votes of the rest 

1 Seward's disappointment is expressed in a letter to his wife, written May 30, 
i860 : " I am a leader deposed by my own party in the hour of organization for 
decisive battle." Lincoln recognized Seward's valuable support and great gifts 
when he bestowed on him the office of Secretary of State. The other aspirants 
for the nomination, Chase, Smith, Bates, and Cameron, also received places in 
Lincoln's first cabinet. 



412 



The Crisis of Distmion 



of the Southern states. But the electoral vote does not tell the 
story of the election. Douglas polled a very large popular vote 
in all the states of the North (see map). He received 1,370,- 
000 votes to Lincoln's 1,860,000, and would have easily won 

I^m I » ¥ ¥!£<m A Wr ^^^^ *^ support of the united 

vIlAKLlllSTOJl Democratic party. He was 

repudiated by the adminis- 
|UV P H f TT 11 V ^^^tion of Buchanan and by 
ifl II n U U Jl A ^^^6 T^^\Q2X slavery leaders of 



EXTRA: 



>%MM<I ui«m(nou«/j; at I.I« oV/ocA-. P. M^ Dtetmhtr 
itOlh, I860. 

AJf ORDUTAJVCE 

T» dUtoItt th» Oifcin ttlieem (Ac Slalt oT So 



Wt. He pKfli cf lit sub 0/a.M Oireteift it CiaiMitfn mcmtUd, i 
a it icrcty lUlanl ixdcriim<4 



the South, yet he received 
nearly twice as many votes 
(1,370,000 to 840,000) as 
their candidate, Breckinridge. 
It was a wonderful testimony 
to his personal and political 
hold on his countiymen. 
Again, although Lincoln re- 
ceived 180 electoral votes to 
123 for Douglas, Bell, and 
Breckinridge combined, his 
popular vote was only 1,860,- 
000 to 2,810,000 cast against 
him.^ He was the choice of 
less than half the voters of 
the country, — a fact which 
goes far to explain his cau- 
tious, conciliatory conduct in 
office. Finally, the election 
showed that the South as a 
whole was not in favor of secession in i860. For Douglas and 
Bell, both stanch Union men, polled 135,000 votes more than 
Breckinridge in the slave states. 

1 The electoral system of choice of President may fail to show the popular 
choice. The candidate who receives most votes (a plurality) in any state gets all 
the electoral votes of that state, though his opponents combined may poll more 
than double his vote, as Lincoln's opponents did in California and Oregon. 



Th«l llu Orliouic. idopM t; u <i CoottaUoii, oa Uia twMlj-lbiri d./ o 
reuQtoui UrJ ODii IhonsuiLMTeii bmdnd udelglily-eijlil, irlitnbj lb« C 
Oallca Sui« of iD.tic to nUa.d. ud .!..> .n icu „d ,.«. of ici. of u,. Oo..rJ. 
Auembly or Ihil Sum, nUfyiag uusdrngna of Ui< nid CouUnubii. u. tmh, ropoJod: 
ud liiUituloa 4o. wUiiUaj Ul«« SoaO. CUoliU ud olbu SWw ai.J., lt>. iui. of 
•th. Doited 8UIU ot Aaeiia,- li bonb; diuoliM. 



UNION 

DISSOLVED! 

Facsimile of the Ordinance of 
Secession 




Popular Electoral 

Vote Vote 



Ml 



aia 



Lincoln 1,866,452 180 

Breckenridge 849,781 72 

WMk -^^^^ 588,879 39 

Douglas 1,376,957 12 



"^ / \ (4) 

\ 



L.L. POATES ENS.CO., N.V. 



The President! 



-'-isi?' 









y ^ 



tlection of iS6o 



Secessiojt 



413 



The legislature of South Carolina was in session when the 601. The 






election of Lincoln was announced. It had met to choose the 
presidential electors for the state,^ and after choosing Breckin- 
ridge electors it had voted to remain in session until the result 
of the election was known, threatening to advise the secession 
of the state in case the " Black Republican " candidate were 
successful. It now im- 
mediately called a con- 
vention of the state to 
meet the next month to 
carry out its threat of se- 
cession. On the twentieth 
of December the con- 
vention met at Charles- 
ton and carried, by the 
unanimous vote of its 
169 members, the reso- 
lution that " the Union 
now subsisting between 
South Carolina and the 
other states, under the 
name of the United States 
of America, is hereby 
dissolved." The ordi- 
nance of secession was 

met with demonstrations of joy by the people of South Carolina. 
The city of Charleston was decked with the palmetto flag of the 
state. Salvos of artillery were fired, houses were draped with 
blue bunting, and the bells were rung in a hundred churches. 
The ancient commonwealth of South Carolina, after many 
threats and warnings, had at last " resumed " its position as a 
free and independent state. 

1 South Carolina was the only state in i860 that continued the custom, common 
in the early days of our history to most of the states, of choosing presidential 
electors by vote of the legislature. In all the other states they had come to be 
chosen by vote of the people. 



secession of 
South Caro- 
lina, Decem- 
ber 20, i860 




Secession Banner displayed in the South 
Carolina Convention 



414 



The C'^isis of Disiinioii 



602. The for- 
mation of the 
Southern 
Confederacy, 
February 4, 
1861 



The Southern Confederacy 

Within six weeks after the secession of South Carolina the 
states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and 
Texas had severed their connection with the Union. Delegates 
from six of these seven " sovereign states " met at Montgomery, 

Alabama, February 4, 186 1, 
and organized a new Con- 
federacy. Jefferson Davis 
of Mississippi was chosen 
president, and Alexander H. 
Stephens, of Georgia, vice 
president. A constitution 
was drawn up and submitted 
to the several states of 
the Confederacy for ratifica- 
tion. This constitution was 
very similar to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, 
except that slavery was ex- 
pressly sanctioned, Congress 
was forbidden to levy pro- 
tective duties, the President 
was elected for a term of 
six years without eligibility 
for reelection, and the mem- 
bers of the cabinet were given the right to speak on the floor 
of Congress.-^ A Confederate flag, the " stars and bars," was 
adopted. A tax of one eighth of a cent a pound on exported 
cotton was levied. President Davis was authorized to raise an 
army of 100,000 men and secure a loan of $15,000,000, and 

1 The Confederate constitution is printed in parallel columns with the 
Constitution of the United States in Wilson's History of the American People, 
Vol. IV, Appendix. Of course, the Confederate constitution never had a chance 
to go into fair operation, as the Southern Confederacy was overthrown in the 
great Civil War, which followed immediately upon its adoption. 




Facsimile of the Confederate 
Constitution 



Secession 415 

a committee of three, with the impetuous Yancey of Alabama as 
chairman, was sent abroad to secure the friendship and alliance 
of European courts. Both Davis and Stephens believed that 
the South would have to fight " a long and bloody war " to 
establish their independence. 

The Southern leaders -spoke much of the '' tyranny " of the 603. Lin- 
North, and compared themselves to the Revolutionary fathers tion no just 

of 1776, who wrested their independence from Great Britain, cause for 

secession 

But the simple facts of the case warranted no such language. 
A perfectly fair election in November had resulted in the 
choice of a Republican for President. Abraham Lincoln, 
although he believed that slavery must ultimately disappear 
from the United States, had given repeated assurances to the 
men of the South that he would not disturb the institution in 
their states, and that he was even in favor of the execution of 
the Fugitive-Slave Law of 1850, the violation of which by the 
Personal-Liberty acts of the Northern states was the one real 
grievance of the South, Southern statesmen all knew that 
Abraham Lincoln's plighted word was good,-^ To call the elec- 
tion of such a man with such a program an invasion of the 
rights of the South, a violation of the Constitution, or '^ an insult 
that branded the people of the South as sinners and criminals " 
was absurd. Besides, as Stephens pointed out in the speech by 
which he endeavored to restrain Georgia from secession, the 
'Republicans were in the minority in both branches of Congress, 
and the President, even if inclined to '' invade the rights of the 
South," could do nothing without the support of Congress. In 

1 Lincoln asked the senators from the cotton states to advise their people to 
wait before seceding until " some act deemed violative of their rights was done 
by the incoming administration." To his friend, Alexander H , Stephens of Georgia, 
he wrote (December 22, i860) : " Do the people of the South really entertain fears 
that a Republican administration would directly or indirectly interfere with their 
slaves . . . ? If they do, I wish to assure you , . . that there is no cause for such 
fears. The South would be in no more danger in this respect than it was in the 
days of Washington." It was a grave mistake of Stephens that he did not publish, 
this letter until after Lincoln's assassination, though even this assurance would 
probably not have held the Southern states back from secession. 



4l6 The Crisis of Disunion 

1856 the Republicans, defeated at the polls, had peacefully 
acquiesced in the election of a President who favored the ex- 
tension of slavery in the territories. In i860, victorious in the 
election of a President who opposed such extension, had they 
not the right to expect the same chivalrous acquiescence from 
their opponents? 

The conduct of President Buchanan certainly was anything 
but " tyrannical." In his annual message of December 4, i860, 
when it was almost certain that South Carolina would secede, 
he declared that no state had a right to leave the Union. Yet 
at the same time he gave the secessionists comfort by adding 
that the government of the United States had no legal means 
of compelling a state to remain in the Union. He made no 
attempt to restrain South Carolina when that state seceded and 
seized property of the United States (public buildings, arsenal, 
forts) within her borders. He allowed her to fire the guns of a 
battery seized from the United States at a ship bearing the flag 
of the United States, and made no protest. He saw the other 
six cotton states secede and turn over the forts and arsenals, 
the troops and money ^ of the United States to the Southern 
Confederacy, without raising a finger to prevent it. He was so 
anxious to avert war, or at least to ward it off until he should 
have surrendered the reins of government into the hands of 
Abraham Lincoln on the fourth of March, 1861, that he lost 
even the respect of the secessionists. They called him an imbecile 
and boasted of " tying his hands." He did not even have the 
force to dismiss from his cabinet Secretaries Floyd and Thomp- 
son, who were working openly for the cause of secession. Had 
it not been for the presence in the cabinet of a trio of stanch 
Unionists (Black, Holt, and Stanton), President Buchanan would 
have probably yielded to the demands of South Carolina, recog- 
nized her as an independent " sovereign state," abandoned to 

^ 1 The state of Louisiana received a special vote of thanks from the Confed- 
erate government at Montgomery for turning over to it ^536,000 in coin seized at 
the United States mint and customhouse in New Orleans. 



Secession 417 

her the forts in Charleston harbor, and left her in peaceful 

possession of the property of the United States.-^ 

The acts of the Congress which sat in the winter of i860- 605. The 

1 86 1 gave the South as little provocation for secession as did amendments 

the words of Lincoln or the deeds of Buchanan. Instead of ifL^°°^!®^^o' 

December 181 

raising armies to punish South Carolina, or expelling the mem- i860 
hers of the seceding states from its halls, Congress bent its 
whole effort to devising a plan of compromise which should 
keep the Union intact. The venerable Senator J. J. Crittenden 
of Kentucky, the successor of Henry Clay, proposed a series of 
"unamendable amendments" to the Constitution (December 18, 
i860), restoring the Missouri-Compromise line of 36° 30^ 
as the boundary between slave territory and free territory, 
pledging the United States government to pay Southern owners 
for all runaway slaves they lost through nonenforcement of the 
Fugitive-Slave Law in the free states, and forbidding Congress 
ever to interfere with the domestic slave trade or with slavery 
in the states where it was established by law. A select com- 
mittee of thirteen in the Senate, including the leaders of public 
opinion in the North and the South (Seward, Douglas, and Davis), 
was appointed to consider the Crittenden amendments. At the 
same time a committee of thirty-three in the House was chosen 
to work also at the problem of reconciliation; 

But the committees failed to agree. The Republican mem- 606. The 
bers refused to accept the line 36° 30' or any other line dividing c^ittenden^^ 
slaveholding territories from free territories. Their platform amendments 
called for the prohibition by Congress of slavery in all the 
territories of the United States; and their position was sup- 
ported by President-elect Lincoln, who wrote to Mr. Kellogg, 
the Illinois member of the House committee, " Entertain no 
proposition for the extension of slavery." Douglas asserted later 

1 What a contrast to President Jackson's determined course when South 
Carolina annulled the tariff acts in 1832 ! It was a coincidence that it was to 
Buchanan himself (then at the embassy at St. Petersburg) that Jackson wrote, 
" I have met nullification at the threshold." No wonder men of the North in the 
closing days of i860 cried, " O for one hour of Andrew Jackson I " 



41 8 The Crisis of Disunion 

that both of the extreme proslavery men on the Senate com- 
mittee (Davis of Mississippi and Toombs of Georgia) were ready 
to accept the Crittenden amendments, and laid on the Repub- 
lican members, led by Seward, the responsibility for the defeat 
of this final attempt of Congress to arrive at a compromise 
on the slavery question.^ But even if Davis and Toombs had 
accepted the Crittenden amendments, there is little to encourage 
the belief that they could have made their states agree to a meas- 
ure which, by excluding slavery from territory north of 36° 30', 
annulled the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the Dred Scott 
decision of 1857. It was precisely the unrestricted extension 
of slavery and its unqualified recognition by the government for 
which the South was contending. The " tyranny " which drove 
the seven cotton states into secession was the election of Abraham 
Lincoln on a platform which declared that the spread of slavery 
must stop, — that slavery was sectional and freedom national. 
607. Why the Considering the fact that only very small portions of the terri- 
tocompro^ tories of the United States in i860 (namely, certain districts 
mise in i860 -j^ Kansas and New Mexico) were at all adaptable to slave labor, 
it may seem strange that the South should have seceded from 
the Union rather than endure a Republican administration. But 
the matter had passed beyond the stage of calm reflection. 
Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, and other leaders of 
judicious temper were unable to control the situation in the 
interests of compromise, while orators of the ''fire-eating" 
type were inflaming passions by heaping sarcasm and in- 
vective upon the " Yankee " and making the very name 
" Republican " a hateful provocation to the Southerners. 
On the so-called " Black Republicans " they laid all the blame 

1 A great " Peace Conference," attended by delegates from twenty-one states. 
met at Washington the same day the Confederate government was organized at 
Montgomery (February 4, 1861). A little later Congress, by the bare two-thirds 
majorities needed (133 to 65 in the House, 24 to 12 in the Senate), passed an 
amendment to the Constitution, making slavery inviolable in the states where it 
was established by law (February 28, 1861). But it was too late for compromise^ 
The amendment was ratified by only two of the states. 



Secession 419 

for the abolitionist agitation and insults of a generation past, 
for the Personal-Liberty acts which aided the escape of their 
negro slaves, for the emigrants and rifles which prevented them 
from making a slave state out of Kansas, and for the diabolical 
attempt at Harpers Ferry to let loose upon their wives and 
children the horrors of a negro insurrection. Under no terms 
would they continue to live in a Union ruled by such a party. 
" No, sir," cried Senator Wigfall of Texas, " not if you were to 
hand us blank paper and ask us to write a constitution, would 
we ever again be confederated with you." James Russell Lowell 
summed the whole matter up in a single sentence, when he wrote 
in the January (186 1) number of the Atlantic Monthly^ "The 
crime of the North is the census of i860." Steadily and rapidly 
the free population of the North had been growing during the 
decades 1 840-1 860, until it contained enough liberty men to elect 
a President who declared that the spread of slavery must stop.^ 

Both Davis and Stephens in their accounts of the Southern 6O8. slavery 
Confederacy, written after the Civil War, asserted that not Jf secess^ior* 
slavery but the denial to the South of her rights under the ^^ *^® ^^"^ 
Constitution was the cause of secession and the war which 
followed. But the only " right " for which the South was con- 
tending in i860 was the right to have the institution of slavery 
recognized and protected in all the territory of the United 
States. Whether or not the Constitution gave the South this 
right was exactly the point of dispute. It was not a case of the 
North's refusing to give the South its constitutional right, but 
of the North's denying that such was the constitutional right of 
the South. It was a conflict in the interpretation of the Con- 
stitution ; and slavery, and slavery alojie, was the cause of that 

1 The following table shows the increase of the Liberty, Free-Soil, and Re- 
publican vote between the years 1840 and i860 : 

1840 James G. Bimey received 7000 votes 

1844 James G. Bimey received 62,000 votes 
1848 Martin Van Buren received 290,000 votes 
1852 John P, Hale received 156,000 votes 

1856 John C. Fremont received 1,340,000 votes 
i860 Abraham Lincoln received 1,860,000 votes 



420 The Crisis of Disunion 

conflict. To say that secession and the Civil War were not 
caused by slavery, therefore, is to say that the thing for which 
a man is fighting is not the cause of the fight. 

609. The Whether or not the Southern states had a right to secede 
the^southto fi"0"^ the Union and form a new Confederacy, for the cause of 
secede slavery or anything else, is another question. A people must 

always be its own judge of whether its grievances at any mo- 
ment are sufficient to justify revolt from the government which 
it has heretofore acknowledged. Our Revolutionary forefathers 
exercised that right of judgment when they revolted from the 
British crown. Until a revolt is successful it is "rebellion" 
against constituted authorities, and the authors of it and partici- 
pants in it are, in the eyes of the law, traitors. If it is success- 
ful, it is called a " revolution," and marks the birth of a new 
civil society or " state." There is no written law that can for- 
bid the " sacred right of revolution," because revolution comes 
from the people who are the rightful makers of the law. We 
may believe, as many men of the South do believe to-day, that 
the causes of the revolt of the Southern states in 1861 were not 
sufficient to justify secession and war ; but the right to revolt, if 
the South thought it had just cause, is beyond argument. 

610. Conduct Many of the leading men of the South remained at Wash- 
em leaders at i^^gton, in Congress or in executive positions, long after they 
Washington, ^^d lost their sympathy for the government which they had 

taken their oath to support. Two members of the cabinet, 
Floyd of Virginia and Thompson of Mississippi, used their 
high positions rather to encourage than to prevent disunion. 
The senators from the cotton states were in constant com- 
munication with the governors and public men of their 
states, keeping them informed on events in Washington 
and directing the course of secession.-^ " By remaining in 

1 The senators from Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkan- 
sas, and Texas met in a caucus in a committee room of the Senate, January 5, 
1 86 1, and advised their states to secede immediately. Even then these senators 
did not resign their seats, but waited until they heard that their states had 
actually passed secession ordinances. 



Secession 421 

our places," wrote Senator Yulee of Florida, " we can keep the 
hands of Mr. Buchanan tied and disable -the Republicans from 
effecting any legislation that will strengthen the hands of the 
incoming administration." This conduct of the Southern states- 
men was resented in the North as a violation of their oath to 
support the Constitution of the United States. 

The Fall of Fort Sumter 

It was a serious condition of affairs that confronted Abraham 611. crisis 

Lincoln when he was sworn into the office of President on ^j^ faced°on 

March 4, 1861. A rival government in the South had been his inaugura- 
^' ^ tion, March4, 

in operation for a full month. All the military property, except 1861 

one or two forts, in the seven states which composed the Southern 
Confederacy had been seized by the secessionist government.^ 
From Congress and the executive departments at Washington, 
from federal offices all through the North, and from army and 
navy posts, Southern men were departing daily in , order to 
join the fortunes of their states. Many voices in the North 
were bidding them farewell and godspeed. And, most serious 
of all, brave Major Robert Anderson, with a little garrison of 
83 men in Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, was writing to 
the War Department that his stores of flour and bacon were 
almost exhausted. 

Lincoln's inaugural address was a reassertion of his kindly 612. The in- 
feeling toward the South and a plea for calm deliberation be- dS"^^^^^" 
fore any acts of violence. The new President declared his 
purpose of holding the forts and property belonging to the gov- 
ernment of the United States and of collecting the duties and 
imposts. But beyond what was necessary to execute the laws 
according to his oath of office, he disclaimed any intention of 
using force or of "invading" the South. He appealed to the 
common memories of the North and the South, which, like 

1 It was estimated that one half the military property of the natiorij valued at 
^30,000,000, was in the hands of the Confederate government. 



422 



The Crisis of Disunion 



613. The 

situation in 

Charleston 

harbor 



" mystic cords, stretched from every battlefield and patriot 
grave to every living heart . . . over this broad land." Turn- 
ing to the South he said : '' \x).your hands, my dissatisfied fellow 
countrymen, and not in mine is the momentous issue of civil 
war. The government will not assail you. You can have no 
conflict without yourselves being the aggressors. You have no 
oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while / 
shall have the 
most solemn one 
to preserve, pro- 
tect, and de- 
fend it."i 

A few days 
after his inau- 
guration Presi- 
dent Lincoln 
called the mem- 
bers of his cabi- 
net ^ together, 
and laid before 
them the criti- 
cal situation at 
Charleston. In 
the previous De- 
cember Buchanan had heard the demands of commissioners 
from the " sovereign state of South Carolina," who had come 
to treat with the government of the United States for the sur- 
render of the forts in Charleston harbor, and had weakly prom- 
ised not to make any move to provision or reenforce the forts so 

1 The entire inaugural address should be read by every student. It is the 
finest state paper in our history. It can be found in full in Nicolay and Hay's 
Abraham Lincoln, a History, Vol. Ill, p. 327. 

2 The cabinet was composed of the following men : State, William H. Seward ; 
Treasury, Salmon P. Chase ; War, Simon Cameron ; Navy, Gideon Welles ; 
Interior, Caleb Smith ; Attorney-General, Edwin Bates ; Postmaster-General, 
Montgomery Blair. Edwin M. Stanton succeeded Cameron in the War Depart- 
ment early in 1862. 




MORRIS 1 /island JF"';g2t?4^'*' 



Charleston Harbor 

Showing Fort Sumter and the battery which fired on 
the Star of the West 



Secession 423 

long as South Carolina refrained from attacking them. Early in 
January, however, Buchanan had been spurred by the Unionist 
sentiment in his cabinet to send the transport Star of the West 
with provisions for Major Anderson's garrison in Fort Sumter. 
In the early morning of January 9, 186 1, as the Star of the 
West was approaching Fort Sumter with the American flag at 
her masthead, she was struck by shots from the battery on 
Morris Island and forced to turn back. Public sentiment in 
the North was outraged by this attack upon the flag, but still 
Buchanan parleyed and excused, praying for the arrival of the 
day which should release him from the responsibilities of his high 
office. That day had now arrived. But meanwhile the South 
Carolinians had strengthened the batteries that bore upon Fort 
Sumter, until Major Anderson reported that reenforcements of 
20,000 men would be necessary to maintain his position. 

It was a critical moment. To send reenforcements to Major 614. Lincoln 
Anderson would probably precipitate war. There was a wide- to p*rovisfon 
spread feeling^ in the North that if the Southern states wished ^^''^ Sumter, 

^ . ^ April I, 1861 

to secede in peace, they should be allowed to do so. Winfield 
Scott, the old hero of two wars and the highest general in the 
army, advised letting the " wayward sisters depart in peace " ; 
and Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribufie, next to 
Lincoln and Seward the most influential man in the Republican 
party, wrote : ''If the cotton states shall decide that they can 
do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them 
go in peace. . . . We hope never to live in a republic whereof 
one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets." Lincoln him- 
self hated the thought of war, but disunion seemed a still worse 
evil. His oath of office left him no choice, he thought, of par- 
leying with secession. On the first of April, therefore, with the 
consent of all his cabinet except Seward and Smith, he notified 
Governor Pickens of South Carolina that an attempt would be 
made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions, hut that no men 
or ammunition would be thrown into the fort except in case of 
resistance on the part of the state. 



424 The Crisis of Distmion 

615. The When the Confederate government at Montgomery heard of 
of Fort Sum- Lincoln's intentions, it ordered General Beauregard, who was 
i^'^istf"^ "" ^^ command of some 7000 troops at Charleston, to demand the 

immediate surrender of the fort. Major Anderson refused to 
abandon his post, and General Beauregard, following orders 
from Montgomery, made ready to reduce Fort Sumter by 
cannon. Just before dawn, on the twelfth of April, 1861, a 
shell rose from the mortars of Fort Johnson and, screaming 
over the harbor, burst just above the fort. It was the signal 
for a general bombaniment. In a few minutes, from the bat- 
teries of Sullivan's, Morris, and James islands, east and south 
and west, fifty cannons were pouring shot and shell upon Fort 
Sumter. Anderson stood the terrific . bombardment for two 
whole days, while Northern steamers lay rolling in the heavy 
weather outside the bar, unable to come to his relief. Finally, 
when the fort had been battered to ruins and was afire from 
red-hot shot, Anderson surrendered, saluting the tattered flag 
as he marched his half-suffocated garrison to the boats. 

616. Lin- The bombardment of Fort Sumter opened the Civil War. 

coin ' ^ cflll "for 

troops, April The day after the surrender of the fort (April 15) Lincoln 
15, 1861 issued a proclamation declaring that the laws of the United 

States were opposed in the states of South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas " by com- 
binations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course 
of judicial proceeding," and called on the states of the Union 
for 75,000 troops of their militia "to suppress the said combina- 
tions." At the same time he ordered all persons concerned in 
this uprising against the government to disperse within twenty 
days, and summoned Congress to assemble in extra session on 
the fourth of July. 

617. The The effect of the fall of Fort Sumter and of the President's 
Worth of the proclamation was the instantaneous crystallization of feeling both 
sumter^°'^ North and Sout^i. In the North men forgot party lines and 

political animosities. Douglas, the leader of a million and a 
half Democrats, hastened to the White House to grasp Lincoln's 



Secession 425 

hand and pledge him his utmost support in defending the Union. 
Ex-Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, hitherto ruled by Southern 
sympathies, came over to the Union cause. Editors like Horace 
Greeley, preachers like Henry Ward Beecher, statesmen like 
Edward Everett, who had lately found the idea of forcing the 
Southern states to remain in the Union abhorrent, now joined 
in the call to arms. One thing only filled men's thoughts, — the 
American flag had been fired on by order of the secessionist 
government at Montgomery. 

The South was jubilant over the fall of Fort. Sumter. Walker, 618. The ef- 
the Confederate secretary of war, predicted that by the first south° 
of May the Confederate flag would float over the dome of the 
Capitol at Washington. Lincoln's call for troops, which to the 
North meant the preservation of the Union, was looked on by 
the South as a wicked threat to invade the sacred soil of sover- 
eign states and subjugate a peaceful people who asked only 
^' to be let alone," to live under their own institutions.^ The 
Confederate Congress met what (in spite of the firing on Fort 
Sumter) they called '^ Mr. Lincoln's declaration of war on the 
South" by raising an army of 100,000 men and securing a 
loan of $50,000,000. 

There were eight states south of Mason and Dixon's line 619. Four 
which had not joined the Southern Confederacy before the join the con. 
attack on Fort Sumter, although they were all slaveholding ^ederacy 
states and there was strong secessionist sentiment in all of 
them but Delaware.^ Lincoln's call for troops drove four of 
these states (Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee) 
into the Confederacy ; while Kentucky and Missouri, whose 
governors had refused with equal indignation to furnish their 

1 Jefferson Davis wrote in his message to the Confederate Congress (April 29) : 
"We feel that our cause is just and holy. ... In independence we seek no con- 
quest ... no cession from the states with which we have lately confederated. . . . 
All we ask is to be let alone, — that those who have never held any power over 
us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, we must, resist 
to the direst extremity." 

2 They were Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North 
Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas. 



426- 



The Crisis of Disunion 



militia for the purpose of " subjugating their sister states of 
the South," were kept in the Union only with great difficulty.-^ 



620. Virginia 
furnishes 
General Lee 
to the Con- 
federacy 




How the Southern Confederacy was enlarged after the 
Fall of Fort Sumter 

The secession of Virginia two days after Lincoln's call for 
troops was an event of prime importance. It gave the South 
her greatest general, Robert E. Lee. General Lee was the son 
of a distinguished Revolutionary general, belonging to one of 
the first families of Virginia, and was himself a gentleman of 

1 In Missouri it actually came to civil war. Governor Jackson was a secessionist, 
while the Union cause was championed by Francis P. Blair, Jr., one of Missouri's 
first citizens, and brother of the Postmaster-General in Lincoln's cabinet. Captain 
Lyon, commanding the Home Guards (Unionist troops), took Camp Jackson, 
which the secessionists had fortified on the outskirts of St. Louis ; then sailed 
up the Missouri River and drove the Jackson government out of the capital, 



Secession 427 

spotless purity of character, — noble, generous, sincere, brave, 
and gifted. He had already been selected by President Lincoln 
to command the Union army, but he felt that he could not draw 
his sword against his native state. After an agonizing mental 
struggle he resigned his commission in the United States army 
and offered his services to his state. He became commander 
of the Virginia troops, and, in May, 1862, general of the Con- 
federate army in Virginia, which he led with wonderful skill and 
devotion through the remainder of the Civil War.^ 

The secession of Virginia also brought the boundaries of the 621. united 
Confederacy up to the Potomac River, and planted the '' stars attacked*in^^ 
and bars " where they could be seen from the windows of the Baltimore, 

•' April 19, 1861 

Capitol at Washington. The city was almost defenseless. There 
were rumors that Beauregard's troops were coming from Charles- 
ton to attack it. The troops of the North, in responding to Lin- 
coln's call, had to cross the state of Maryland to reach the capital. 
Maryland was a slave state, and her sympathy with the " sister 
states of the South " was strong. Baltimore was full of seces- 
sionists. While the Sixth Massachusetts regiment was crossing 
the city it was attacked by a mob, and had to fight its way to 
the Washington station in a bloody street battle (April 1 9). The 
first blood of the Civil War was shed on the anniversary of the 
battle of Lexington. 

President Lincoln was in great distress for the safety of the 622. The 
capital.^ Men were leaving Washington by hundreds in a panic, i^v^ed from 
fleeing as from a doomed city. Governor Hicks of Maryland, ^^^^^' '^^"^ 
swept along by the secessionist sentiment at Baltimore, had 

Jefferson City. Kentucky was kept faithful largely through the tactful and patient 
nursing of Unionist feeling by President Lincoln, who was especially anxious 
that his native state should not join the ranks of the seceders. 

1 It was not till near the close of the war (1865) that President Davis, who 
never very cordially recognized Lee's greatness, was forced by public opinion to 
make him general in chief of the Confederate forces in the field. 

2 Nicolay and Hay (Vol. IV, p. 152) tell how President Lincoln paced the 
floor of his office in the White House for hours on the twenty-third of April, gaz- 
ing out of the windows that looked down the Potomac, where he expected any 
moment to see the Confederate gunboats appear, and calling out audibly, in his 
anxiety, for the Union troops to hasten to the relief of the city. 



428 The Crisis of Disunion 

forbidden any more troops to cross the soil of the state (April 
22), and infuriated mobs had torn up railroads and destroyed 
bridges. But plucky regiments from Massachusetts and New- 
York (" the dandy Seventh ") reached Annapolis by the waters 
of Chesapeake Bay, and relaying the track and rebuilding the 
bridges as they marched, came into the city of Washington on 
the twenty-fifth of April. As they marched up Pennsylvania 
Avenue, with colors flying and bands playing, the anxious gloom 
which had lain on the city since the fall of Fort Sumter was 
changed to rejoicing. The national capital was safe. 



REFERENCES 

The Election of Abraham Lincoln : J. W. Draper, The Civil War in 
America, Vol. I, chaps, xxvi-xxxi ; J. F. Rhodes, History of the United 
States from the Compromise of 18^0, Vol. II, chaps, x, xi; Vol. Ill, chap, 
xiii; NicoLAY and Hay, Wo7-ks of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. VI; Allen 
Johnson, Stephen Arnold Douglas, chap, xviii ; H. von Holst, Con- 
stitutional History of the United States, Vol. VII, chaps, i, iii-vii ; 
William MacDonald, Select Documents of United States History, 
lyyb-iSbi, No. 94 ; A. B. Hart, American History told by Contem- 
poraries, Vol. IV, Nos. 49-61 ; J. W. Burgess, The Civil War and the 
Constitution, Vol. I, chaps, iii, iv ; Edward Stanwood, History of the 
Presidency, chap, xxi ; F. E. Chadwick, Causes of the Civil War 
(American Nation Series), chaps, i-ix. 

The Southern Confederacy : Draper, Vol. I, chaps, xxxii, xxxiii ; Vol. 
II, chaps, xxxiv, xxxv; Rhodes, Vol. Ill, chap, xiv; Von Holst, 
Vol. VII, chaps, viii-xi ; MacDonald, Nos. 95-97 ; Hart, Nos. 62-69 ; 
Burgess, Vol. I, chaps, iv-vi; Chadwick, chaps, ix-xi; Horace 
Greeley, The American Conflict, Vol. I, chaps, xxvi, xxvii; J. S. 
Wise, The Ejid of an Era, chaps, x, xi; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham 
Lincoln, a History, Vol. Ill, chap, i; Jefferson Davis, Rise and Fall 
of the Confederacy, Vol. I, part iii; G. T. CuRTiS, fames Buchanan, 
Vol. II, chap. XV. 

The Fall of Fort Sumter : Draper, Vol. II, chaps, xxxvi-xl ; Rhodes, 
Vol. Ill, chap, xiv; Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 70-74; Burgess, Vol. I, 
chap, vii ; Greeley, Vol. I, chaps, xxviii, xxix ; Chadwick, chaps, 
xii-xix; S. W. Crawford, The Genesis of the Civil War; Abner 
Doubleday, Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie; C. E. 



Secession 429 

Merriam, American Political Theories, chap, vi ; J. G. NiCOLAY, The 
Outbreak of the War, chaps, ii, iii ; Davis, Vol. I, part iv ; J. B. Moore, 
Works of James Bicchanan, Vol. XI (use complete Table of Contents). 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Republican Convention of i860 at Chicago : Rhodes, Vol. II, pp. 
456-473 ; Burgess, Vol. I, pp. 58-67 ; Von Holst, Vol. VII, pp. 140- 
186 ; Hart, Vol. IV, No. 50 ; Stanwood, pp. 290-297 ; James Schouler, 
History of the United States, Vol. V, pp. 457-461 ; NicoLAY and Hay, 
Abraham Lincoln, a History, Vol. II, pp. 255-278. 

2. Alexander H. Stephens, a Southern Antisecessionist : Nicolay and 
Hay, Vol. Ill, pp. 266-275; Johnston and Browne, Alexander H. 
Stephens, pp. 357-387 ; Louis Pendleton, Alexander H. Stephens, pp. 
153-170; Hart, Vol. IV, No. 53; Henry Cleveland, Letters and 
Speeches of Alexander H. Stephens, pp. 694-713; A. H. Stephens, A 
Constitutional View of the Late War betzueen the States, Vol. II, pp. 
299 ff. 

3. Efforts at Compromise, 1860-1861 : Chadwick, pp. 166-183 ; Hart, 
Vol. IV, Nos. 63, 65, 68, 69 ; Von Holst, Vol. VII, pp. 393-457 ; 
Nicolay and Hay, Vol. Ill, pp. 214-238; Greeley, Vol. I, pp. 351- 
406 ; W. G. Brown, The Lower South in American History, pp. 83-11 2 ; 
MacDonald, Nos. 93, 95, 96 ; Curtis, Vol. II, pp. 439-444 : Mrs. 
Chapman Coleman, Life of John J. Crittenden, Vol. II, pp. 224-260. 

4. The Struggle to keep Missouri in the Union : Burgess, Vol. I, pp. 
186-191; LuciEN Carr, Missouri, pp. 267-341; Greeley, Vol. I, pp. 
488-492 ;• S. B. Harding, Missouri Party Struggles in the Civil War 
{American Historical Association Reports, Vol. VII, pp. 85-103) ; 
Schouler, Vol. VI, pp. 186-192; Nicolay and Hay, Vol. IV, pp. 
206-226; T. L. Snead, The Fight for Missouri. 

5. John Brown, Apostle : T. W. Higginson, Cheerful Yesterdays, pp. 
i99-234» 258-262; O. P. Anderson, A Voice from Harpers Ferry; 
Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 47, 48 ; Chadwick, pp. 67-89 ; Rhodes, Vol. II, 
pp. 401-416; J. G. Whittier, Brozvn of Ossazuatomie ; M. J. Wright, 
The Trial and Fxecution of John Brown [American Historical Associa- 
tion Reports, Vol. IV, pp. 111-126); O. G. Villard,/c?/^« Brown, Fifty 
Years After, pp. 558-589. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE CIVIL WAR ' " 

The Opposing Forces 

So the men of the North and the sons of Dixie ^ were mus- 
tering to arms in the spring of i86 1 . Each side doubted whether 
the other really meant to fight ; each believed that, if they fought, 
its own victory would be short and decisive. Each was abso- 
lutely convinced of the righteousness of its own cause. '^ War 
has been forced upon us by the folly and fanaticism of the 
Northern abolitionists," said an Atlanta paper ; '' we fight for 
our liberties, our altars, our firesides. . . . Surely 8,000,000 
people armed in the holy cause of liberty . . . are invincible 
by any force the North can send against them." On the other 
side of Mason and Dixon's line Northern mass meetings re- 
solved that " this infamous, hell-born rebellion against the mild- 
est, the most beneficent government ever vouchsafed to men " 
should be speedily put down, and '' our glorious Constitution 
restored in every part of our country." Thirty years of gather- 
ing bitterness had made it absolutely impossible for the men of 
the North and of the South to understand each other. As 
early even as 1832 our distinguished French visitor and critic 
De Tocqueville had prophesied the '' inevitable separation " of 
the two sections.^ 

1 The boundary line which was run in 1 764-1 767 between the colonies of 
Pennsylvania and Maryland, by the surveyors Mason and Dixon (p. 63, note 2), be- 
came the dividing line between free and slave soil. The Southerners called their 
side of Mason and Dixon's line " Dixie land " or '' Dixie." 

2 It was apparently the honest conviction of Northerners that every man south 
of Mason and Dixon's line was a Preston Brooks, and of Southerners that every 
man north of the line was a John Brown. Mr. Russell, the correspondent of 
the London Times ^ found that on one side of the Ohio River he was among 

430 



The Civil War 431 

North and South were unequally matched for the great 624. The re- 
struggle that was before them. 'Although the seceding and the twoTe^ctions^ 
loyal states were about equal in territory, the resources of the population 
North far exceeded those of the South. Of the 31,000,000 in- 
habitants of the United States by the census of i860, there 
were 19,000,000 in the eighteen free states of the North, 3,000,- 
000 in the four loyal slave states of Delaware, Maryland, 
Kentucky, and Missouri, and 9,000,000 in the eleven states of 
the Southern Confederacy. But of the last 9,000,000, nearly 
one half (3,600,000) were negro slaves. For military service 
the North could furnish 5,000,000 men between the ages of 18 
and 60, to about 1,500,000 in the South. Furthermore the 
population of the North was increasing very rapidly (41 per 
cent in the decade 185 0-1860), whereas in most of the states 
of the South it was almost stationary. During the decade 1850- 
1860 immigrants (mostly Irish and Germans) had come into 
the United States in numbers equal to the entire slave popula- 
tion of the seceding states, and had all gone into the free North 
to increase the wealth produced by the mills, the forges, and the 
wheat fields.-^ 

Because cotton formed two thirds of the exports of the 625. indus- 
United States in i860 ($125,000,000 out of $197,000,000), ^"^^ 
the South was deceived into thinking that it was the most pros- 
perous part of the country, and that its slave labor was mak- 
ing New England rich. "But the South overlooked the fact that 

" abolitionists, cutthroats, Lincolnite mercenaries, invaders, assassins," and on the 
other side among " rebels, robbers, conspirators, wretches bent on destroying 
the most perfect government on the face of the earth." He testified that there 
was " certainly less vehemence and bitterness among the Northerners," but no 
less determination. 

1 There was no result of the Compromise of 1850 more favorable to the North 
than its postponement of the great Civil War for ten years. During that decade 
the states of the Northwest were filled up with a hardy, loyal population, who fur- 
nished immense strength to the Northern side during the war. Wisconsin, for 
example, gained 475,000 inhabitants, and Michigan over 650,000, in the decade. 
Discerning Southerners since Calhoun's day had seen the necessity of fighting 
soon if they fought at all. The anxiety of " fire eaters " like Rhett and Yancey to 
hasten the crisis in 1850 finds its explanation partly in this rapid growth of the 
North. 



432 



The Crisis of Disunion 



626, Social 
progress 



a country's wealth consists not in the amount of its exports, 
but in its ability to distribute the necessities and comforts and 
luxuries of life to a growing population. Measured by this 
standard of wealth, the South was poor in i860, in spite of its 
$235,000,000 crop of. cotton. For while a few thousand rich 
planters were selling this crop, and investing their profits in more 
negroes and more land, a majority of the white inhabitants of 




A Group of War Envelopes 

the South were in comparative poverty and idleness, seeing the 
land absorbed by the cotton plantations and the labor market 
filled with negro slaves. 

Manufactures, railroad mileage, the growth of cities, the dif- 
fusion of knowledge, progress in art and letters, are all signs of 
a country's prosperity. The South had hardly any manufactures 
in 1860.^ She spun and wove but two and one-half per cent 

1 The North turned out manufactures in i860 valued at ^1,730,330,000, com- 
pared with an output valued at ^155,000,000 for the South, a ratio of 12 to i. 
Governor Wise of Virginia said to the people of his state in 1859 : " Commerce 
has long since spread her sails and sailed away from you. . . , You have not 
as yet dug more than enough coal to warm yourselves at your own hearths . . . 
you have not yet spun coarse cotton enough to clothe your own slaves." As 
against a cotton crop worth $1235,000,000 raised by the South, the North pro- 
duced wheat and com valued at ^845,000,000. 



The Civil War 433 

of the cotton she raised, and only one fourth of the 31,000 
miles of railroad track in the United States was laid on her 
soil. While the free states of the North abounded in thriving 
cities, equipped with gas and water systems, tramways, public 
schools and libraries, hospitals, banks, and churches, the census 
of i860 found only six " cities " in Alabama with a population 
of 1000 or over, four in Louisiana, and none in Arkansas.^ Not 
a single Southern state had a free public-school system before 
the war. Fifteen per cent of the adult male white population 
of Virginia (in addition of course to practically all the negroes) 
were unable to read or write, according to the census of 1850, 
while only two fifths of one per cent of the adult males of 
Massachusetts were illiterate. 

The cause of this sad social and industrial condition in the 627. slavery 
South was the plantation system founded on negro slavery, ^he south 
which developed a " caste " of some 380,000 aristocratic plant- 
ers at the expense of over 5,000,000 " poor whites." Whatever' 
relieving touches there are in the picture of the slave planta- 
tion, — the sweet, devoted Southern woman nursing her sick 
negroes with her own hands, and the strong and tender attach- 
ment of the children of the household to the old black " mammy " 
in whose arms they had been sung to sleep since infancy, — 
the system of slavery was a blight on industry and a constant 
menace to the character of the slaveholder. The growing gen- 
erations of the slaveholding South had always before their eyes 
certain ugly features of the system. The presence of a large 
number of mulattoes (or persons of mixed white and negro 
blood) showed the moral danger in the institution of slavery, 
while the existence of the coarse slave driver and the callous 
slave trader testified to its cruelty. That the men of the South, 
in defending what they believed to be their rights under a 
government of " liberty and equality," were pledged to defend 

i Zachary Taylor of Louisiana, while on a Northern visit as President-elect, 
in 1848-1849, looked from a height near Springfield, Massachusetts, on a group 
of thriving towns and remarked, " You cannot see any such sight as that in a 
Southern state ! " 



434 



The Crisis of Disunion 



628. Helper's 
" Impending 
Crisis " 



629. Advan- 
tages of the 
Southerners : 
their 
defensive 
position 



and perpetuate such an institution as slavery was a misfor- 
tune which is deplored by none more heartily than by the 
descendants of those men to-day.^ 

We may wonder, too, why the millions of " poor whites " in 
the South, who had no slaves and no interest in slavery, should 
have fought through four years with desperate gallantry for the 
maintenance of a system which meant for them only wretched- 
ness. One of their number, Hinton R. Helper of North Carolina, 
had published a book in 1857, entitled " The Impending Crisis," 
in which he showed with a merciless array of figures the economic 
burden which slavery entailed upon the South. Helper called 
the slaveholding aristocracy no better than the basest " ruffians, 
outlaws, and criminals," and advised " no cooperation with them 
in religion, no affiliation with them in society." Had the " poor 
whites " been able to read and understand the figures and 
arguments of Helper's book, it is probable that they would not 
"have fought the war which meant the perpetuation of slavery 
and their own continued degradation. But the "poor whites" of 
the South were not educated to think. They believed that the 
" Black Republicans " of the North meant to subjugate them 
and turn their land over to the negro. They rose 'in a mass to 
defend a civilization which, had they but realized it, was the 
worst enemy of their interests. 

The leaders of the South knew, of course, that the North 
was superior in resources, but they counted on several real 
advantages and several anticipated developments to give them 
the victory. First, and most important of all, they would be 
fighting on their own soil, whereas the North, in order "to 
repossess the forts and other seized property of the United 

1 In a fiery secessionist speech in the Senate, January 7, 1861, Robert Toombs 
of Georgia closed with the words : " You present us war. We accept it ; and in- 
scribing on our banners the glorious words ' liberty and equality,' we will trust to the 
blood of the brave and the God of battles for security and tranquillity." Another 
Georgian, Louis Pendleton, in his biography of Alexander H. Stephens, writes 
(1904) : " Reflecting Southern men to-day are filled with sadness as they read 
their grandfathers' eulogies of an institution which wrought the ruin of the 
fairest portion of the United States." 



The Civil War 43 S 

States," and to put down the rebellious " combinations," would 
have to " invade " Southern territory. The men who fight on 
the defensive are always at an advantage. They know the lay 
of the land ; they have their base of supplies close at hand ; they 
are inspired by the thought that they are defending their homes. 

Then, too, the Southerners, by nature and training, were 630. Their 
better fitted for war than the mechanics, clerks, and farmers of ^ar°^^^ °^ 
the North. The Southern temper was more ardent. The men 
of the South commonly carried firearms. They were accustomed 
from boyhood to the saddle. In the Mexican War many more 
Southern officers- than Northern ones had been trained for the 
great civil contest. 

Besides these actual advantages the South counted on help 631. The 
in three directions. She expected that foreign nations, espe- poilited iiffts 
cially Great Britain and France, dependent on her for their expectations 
supply of raw cotton, would lend their aid to establish an inde- 
pendent cotton-raising South, which would levy no duties on their 
manufactures. She thought, too, that the first move in behalf 
of a new republic whose comer stone was slavery ^ would bring 
all the other slaveholding states into the Confederacy. And she 
looked to the Democrats of the North, who had cast 1,370,000 
votes against Abraham Lincoln, and whose leaders had re- 
peatedly shown signs of Southern leanings, to defeat any at- 
tempt of the Republicans to " subjugate the South." 

We have seen how completely deceived the South was in 
the last expectation, when the shot fired on Fort Sumter roused 
the North as one man to pledge President Lincoln its aid in 
defending the Union. ^ We have seen also how only four of the 

1 Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, in a famous 
speech at Savannah, Georgia, in the spring of 1861, declared that the new Con- 
federacy was founded upon slavery as a " comer stone." 

«- 2 The Southern press was very bitter over the " desertion " of the Democrats 
of the North : " Where are Messrs. Cushing, Van Buren, Pierce, Buchanan, 
Douglas et id omne genus ^ — where are they in the bloody crusade proposed 
by President Lincoln against the South ? . . . Hounding on the fanatic war- 
fare I . . . The Northern politicians have all left us. Let them fly — all, false 
thanes 1 " 



436 The Crisis of Disunion 

eight slaveholding states north of the cotton states joined the 
Confederacy on Lincoln's call for troops (p. 425). The South 
was equally disappointed in the hope of foreign intervention 
and aid. Queen Victoria issued a proclamation of strict neu- 
trality a month after the fall of Fort Sumter (May 12); and 
Emperor Napoleon III, although expressing to Mr. Slidell, the 
Confederate envoy to France, his personal sympathy for 
the South, was careful to avoid any official breach with the 
government at Washington. 
632. The for- Moreover, large portions even of some of the seceding states 
West vir- remained faithful to the Union, especially the mountain districts 
ginia -j^ western Virginia and North Carolina, and in eastern Ten- 

nessee. Forty-eight counties in western Virginia broke away 
from the state and formed a loyal government, which was rec- 
ognized by President Lincoln, and later received into the Union 
(1863) as the state of West Virginia. A striking proof of the 
divergent views of loyalty in North and South is the fact that 
the wise and moderate Robert E. Lee called the people of West 
Virginia " traitors " for leaving their state to adhere to the Union. 
So the men of the North and the sons of Dixie were arrayed 
against each other, in the spring of 1861, for a contest which 
none dreamed would be the most prolonged and bloody since 
Napoleon's rash attempt, at the beginning of the century, to 
subjugate the continent of Europe. 



V 



From Bull Run to Gettysburg 



633. Theim- The work entitled "The Official Records of the Union and 
the Civil War Confederate Armies and Navies in the War of the Rebellion," 
published by the government at Washington, fills more than 130 
bulky volumes, and chronicles over 2000 engagements, of which 
about 150 are important enough to be called " battles." A mere 
list of the titles of historic biographies and memoirs relating to 
the Civil War would fill hundreds of pages. Such a list pre- 
pared only a year after the close of the war (Bartlett's '' Literature 







The Civil War (J ^ 437 

of the Rebellion," 1866) contains 6073 such titles. This im- 
mense mass of literature pertaining to the Civil War is a proof 
of the significance of that event in our country's history. Except 
for the critical years i775-i789,in which our nation was formed, 
no other period in our history can compare in importance with 
the great Civil War of 1861-1865, which determined that the 
nation which the fathers had founded should endure one and 
undivided, and removed from it the ugly institution of negro 
slavery, which for decades had cursed its soil, embroiled its 
politics, and outraged the conscience of half its people. 

We need not go into the military details of the Civil War in 634. How we 
order to appreciate its importance. Military history is useful only the war"^^ 
for the special student of the science of war. The marching 
and countermarching of the 2,500,000^ men who fought the 
battles of the Civil War, the disposition of artillery, cavalry, 
and infantry by thousands of officers in hundreds of impor- 
tant engagements, the countless deeds of heroism on both sides, 
on land and sea, we must pass over, only to sketch in outline 
the few great campaigns on which the fortunes of the republic 
hung. Two things we must constantly bear in mind : first, the 
superior resources of the North in men and wealth, which told 
with increasing emphasis as the v/ar progressed ; and secondly, 
the advantage that the South had in fighting on her own soil 
against the invading armies of the North.^ Had the South pos- 
sessed the resources of the North, she could never have been 
beaten ; had she attempted to invade the North, her armies 
would have been repulsed at the borders. 

1 Livermore, in his Numbers and Losses in the Civil War (1901), our best 
authority, gives the total numbers on each side, on the basis of an enlistment for 
three years, — Union, 1,556,678; Confederate, 1,082,119. 

2 Strictly speaking, it was not a '■'- civil war." That term refers to a struggle 
between two opposing factions or parties (religious or political) living on the 
same soil. In the war of 1861-1865 a united South, claiming to be an inde- 
pendent country, was invaded by the armies of a (less) united North. Com- 
pare the actual " civil war " in Kansas in i855-i856,vwhere free-state men and 
slave-state men were fighting for control of their common territory. Alexander 
H. Stephens more accurately calls the war of 1861-1865 the War between the 
States. A still better title would be the War of Secession. 



The Civil War 439 

We turn now to the field of battle. When Virginia seceded, 635. "On to 
the capital of the Confederacy was changed from Montgomery, ^^ "^^° ' 
Alabama, to Richmond, and the Confederate Congress was 
called to meet at the new capital, July 20, 1861. The North, 
in the first flush of its enthusiastic response to Lincoln's call 
for troops, was determined that the Confederate Congress 
should not meet. " On to Richmond ! " was the cry that rang 
through the North. The raw troops were not properly organ- 
ized or drilled, and the quartermaster's and commissariat de- 
partments^ were not prepared for a campaign. But President 
Lincoln and General Scott yielded to the popular demand for a 
move on Richmond, especially as the three months' term of the 
militia called for in April was about to expire. 

General Beauregard, with 22,000 troops, was at Manassas 636. The bat- 
Junction, a town near the little stream called Bull Run, about Run (Manas- 
thirty-five miles southwest of Washington. In the Shenandoah ^g^)' J"^y ^i, 
valley, across the Blue Ridge, were 9000 more men under 
General Joseph E. Johnston, who was to become, next to Lee, 
the greatest commander of the South.^ General Patterson, a 
veteran of the War of 18 12, was to hold Johnston in the 
valley, while General McDowell, with an army of 30,000, 
attacked General Beauregard at Manassas. McDowell's '^ grand 
army " set out in high spirits, July 16, accompanied by many 
of the congressmen ^ and officials in Washington, who went to 
see the '' rebellion crushed by a single blow." The battle (on 

1 The quartermaster's department has charge of the transportation of all the 
baggage, food, clothing, and blankets of the army, and the provision of all sup- 
plies except food and ordnance materials. The commissariat department's busi- 
ness is to provide the supplies of food for the soldiers, 

2 Johnston, like Lee, was a gift of Virginia to the Confederacy. He was 
a graduate of West Point, and at the opening of the war he resigned a 
higher position in the United States army than any other officer that joined the 
Confederacy. 

3 It will be recalled that Lincoln, in his proclamation of April 15, had sum- 
moned Congress to meet in extra session on July 4, 1861. This Congress rati- 
fied Lincoln's acts in calling out the militia, blockading the Southern ports, and 
using his extraordinary authority in time of war to interfere with the regular 
procedure of the courts. Lincoln asked Congress for $400,000,000 and 400,000 
men. It voted him 500,000 men. 



440 



The Crisis of Disunion 



the twenty-first) was well planned and bravely fought. Up to 
early afternoon the advantage was with the Union troops,^ but 
at the critical moment Johnston's army, which had eluded Pat- 
terson and hastened eastward at the sound of the firing, ap- 
peared on the field and turned the Union victory into a rout. 
The undisciplined soldiers of McDowell, wearied with the day's 
fighting, threw down their muskets and fled to the Potomac. 
For two days they straggled into Washington, and the capital 
was in a panic for fear Beauregard and Johnston would come 
on their heels. 

The disaster at Bull Run (or Manassas, as the Confederates 
called the battle) sobered the overconfident enthusiasm of the 
Northerners, but did not destroy their determination. They 
set to work in earnest to prepare for the long, severe struggle 
that was before them. George B. McClellan, a young general 
who had done brilliant work in holding West Virginia for the 
Union in May and June, was now put in command of the army 
on the Potomac. McClellan was a magnificent organizer and 
drillmaster, and by the autumn of 1861 he had the 180,000 
men who poured into his camp in response to Lincoln's call, 
organized into a splendid army, nearly three times the size of 
the opposing forces under Lee and Johnston. The aged Gen- 
eral Scott resigned on the last day of October, and McClellan 
was made general in chief of the forces of the United States. 

McClellan could and should have taken Richmond in the 
autumn of 1861, but he was cautious to the point of timidity. 
Personally brave, he feared for the magnificent army under his 
command. He magnified the enemy's forces to three times 
their actual number, and looked on the loss of a brigade from 
his own army as a great calamity. He berated Lincoln and 
Stanton for not sending him more reenforcements.^ It was not 

1 Jefferson Davis, who came in person from Richmond to the battlefield in 
the afternoon^ was met by fleeing Confederate soldiers, who told him that the 
battle was lost. 

2 McClellan took it upon himself to criticize the administration at Washing- 
ton unsparingly, spoke of the " insane folly " of Stanton and Chase, and constantly 



TJie Civil War 441 

until well into the spring of 1862 thac McClellan, after repeated 
orders from Washington to advance, began to move up the 
peninsula between the York and James rivers toward Rich- 
mond. Iwcn then the Peninsular campaign, wliich should have 
been a steady triumphal march to the Confederate capital, 
like Scott's march from Vera Cruz up to the city of Mexico in 
1847, was a slow, guarded approach of itiany weeks' duration, 
as if against an enemy vastly superior in forces. Once, within 
four miles of Richmond, and already within sight of its church 
spires, McClellan retreated because Lincoln detained McDow- 
ell's division of 40,000 men to protect Washington.^ Lee and 
Johnston were quick to seize the moment of the deliverance of 
Richmond to turn in pursuit of the Army of the Potomac. Mc- 
Clellan, always masterly on the defensive, won several engage- 
ments from his pursuers, finally routing them decisively at 
Malvern Hill (July i, 1862) in one of the severest batUes of the 
war. Richmond again seemed to lay within his grasp, but in- 
stead of advancing, he led his army back to Harrisons Landing 
on the James River within reach of the Union gunboats. The 
famous Peninsular campaign was ended. Richmond was still 
undisturbed. President Lincoln removed McClellan from the 
command of the armies of the United States, July 11, 1862. 



prated abuut " saving the country." To Stanton, who had assumed the War port- 
foHo in January, 1862, displacing Cameron, he wrote : " You must send me large 
reenforcements, and send them at once. ... If I save this army now, I tell you 
plainly that 1 owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington 
[President Lincoln]. You have done your best to sacrifice this army." Remark- 
able language for a commander with an army already more than double the 
strength of his adversaries to use to his superiors in Washington I 

1 The cause of the detention of McDowell's troops was the campaign of (Gen- 
eral Thomas J. Jackson in the Shenandoah valley. This wonderful commander 
(a third great Virginian, with Lee and Johnston) with an army of 17,000 men 
had defeated and outwitted 50,000 Union troops in the valley, and threatened the 
capital so effectively that the eyes of the administration were drawn off the army 
of the Potomac. It was Jackson who saved Richmond. Jackson was a rare com- 
bination of fighter and religious fanatic, not unlike Oliver Cromwell. At the 
battle of Bull Run one of his fellow generals said to his troops, " Look at Jackson 
standing there firm as a stone wall 1 " From this remark the general got the name 
"Stonewall" Jackson. 



442 The Crisis of Distmion 

639. The A year had passed since the battle of Bull Run, yet the 

blockade and Union arms had made no progress in Virginia. But the United 
the Trent States navy, under the efficient management of Secretary Welles, 
had accomplished important results. First, it had established so 
effective a blockade along the 3000 miles of the Confederate 
coast that the exports of cotton dropped in value from $202,- 
000,000 in i860 to $4,000,000 in 1862. The Southerners, 
especially after their victory at Bull Run, could not believe that 
Great Britain would stand by quietly and allow the North to 
shut off her cotton supply by a blockade. Their expectations 
of British intervention were heightened almost to a certainty 
when, in November, 186 1, Captain Wilkes of the Union war 
sloop Sa7i Jacinto stopped the British mail steamer Tre7it as 
she was sailing from Havana, forcibly removed from her deck 
the Confederate commissioners to Great Britain and France, 
Messrs. Mason and Slidell, and took them as prisoners to Fort 
Warren in Boston harbor. The deed was hailed with rejoicing 
in the North. The Navy Department congratulated Wilkes, 
and the House of Representatives gave him a formal vote of 
thanks. The South was in high hopes that this insult to the 
British flag would involve the administration at Washington in 
a war with England, and the Queen's government began, in 
fact, to send troops to Canada. But the sober sense of Lin- 
coln, Seward, and Sumner ^ realized that Wilkes's act, however 
gratifying to public sentiment in the North, was a high-handed 
outrage of the principle of the inviolability of vessels of neutral 
nations, for the defense of which we had gone to war with Great 
Britain in 18 12. Consequently, Seward informed the British 
minister. Lord Lyons, on December 26, that the prisoners in 
Fort Warren would be '' cheerfully liberated." Mason and Slidell 
were given up, the British government was satisfied, and the 
blockade of the Southern ports continued undisturbed. 

1 Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was the chairman of the Senate commit- 
tee on foreign relations. He did a great deal to win the reluctant sympathy of 
the English people for the Northern cause. 



The Civil War 443 

The Northern navy won a notable victory in a strange kind 640. The 
of battle that took place in Hampton^Roads, Virginia, March 9, X^t^Monior, 
1862. The Confederates had raised the sunken hull of the March 9, 1863 
Merrimac at the Norfolk navy yards, and, covering her with 
a sloping roof of iron rails smeared with plumbago and 
tallow, had made of her the first " ironclad " in the history of 
naval warfare. This formidable craft, rechristened the Virginia^ 
easily destroyed two of the finest ships of our wooden navy in 
Hampton Roads, on March 8, and waited only for the morrow 
to destroy the rest of the fleet and then sail up the Potomac to 
shell the city of Wash- 
ington. But that same ^ -.^--^ff/ 
night there arrived at ^^ '^,' _ y '' / 
Hampton Roads from __ '^- ' " ' > ^' 
New York a stranger 
war vessel even than 
the Virgifiia. This was 
the Monitor (invented 
by Captain Ericsson), a 
small iron craft shaped ,^^ _ 

like a torpedo boat, ^ 7^ 

, , , n 1 -1 The Vir^hiia destroying the Cu?nbe7iand 

her decks flush with . tt^_„;^^„>>^^j 

in Hampton Roads 

the water, and having 

amidships a revolving gun turret rising only a few feet. A witty 
observer called the boat " a cheese box on a raft." The Moni- 
tor placed herself between the Virginia and the wooden ships 
of the federal navy, and after an all-day fight the dreaded Con- 
federate ram steamed back to the Virginia shore. The wooden 
ships were saved, but at the same time they were made forever 
obsolete. This first battle in history between ironclads announced 
that henceforth the world's navies w^ere to be ships of steel. 

While the wearisome and futile Peninsular campaign was 
dragging through the spring months of 1862, relieved only 
by the victory of the Monitor^ the Union arms were making 
splendid progress in the West. 





444 The Crisis of Disunion 

Of equal importance to the Union cause with the blockade 
of the Southern ports an^ the hoped-for capture of Richmond, 
was the opening of the Mississippi River, which the Confed- 
erates held from its junction with the Ohio down to its mouth. 
The possession of the river would bring the Unionists the double 
advantage of freeing an outlet for the commerce of the North- 
western states, and cutting' off the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, 
and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy. The credit for 
accomplishing this great work belongs, more than to all others, 
to General Ulysses S. Grant and Captain David G. Farragut. 

Grant (born in Ohio in 1822) was a graduate of West Point. 
He had served creditably in the Mexican War, but since its 
and at'shi-"' ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^*^ ^ thriftless and rather intemperate life. The out- 
ioh,Febru- break of the Civil War found him, at the age of thirty-nine, 
1862* ' working in a leather and hardware store in Galena, Illinois, and 
dependent on his father for the support of wife and family. But 
the call to war transformed the poor business man into a military 
genius of the highest order. In February, 1862, with the con- 
sent of General H. W. Halleck, who commanded the Union 
armies of the West, Grant seized the very important forts, Henry 
and Donelson,^ near the mouths of the Tennessee and Cum- 
berland rivers, and carried his victorious army up the Tennes- 
see River, a hundred miles across the state of Tennessee, to 
Pittsburg Landing. 

While waiting here for the arrival of General Buell's army, 
which Halleck had ordered to join him from Nashville, Grant 
was attacked by a superior force under General Albert S. 
Johnston, the best Confederate general in the West. The terrific 
battle of Shiloh (or Pittsburg Landing) lasted two days (April 

1 These forts, built at points where the two great rivers were but twelve 
miles apart, both secured the navigation of the rivers and strengthened the 
Confederate line of defense, which extended from Columbus, Kentucky, on the 
Mississippi, eastward across the state (see map, p. 438). Grant captured 17,000 
troops, with large quantities of supplies, at Donelson. To the request of the Con- 
federate general as to the terms of capitulation, Grant replied, " Unconditional 
surrender." The phrase stuck to him, and U. S. Grant became in popular lan- 
guage " Unconditional Surrender " Grant. 



The Civil War 



445 



6-7, 1862). At nightfall of the first day the Union troops had 
been driven back to the bluffs along the river ; but before morn- 
ing Buell's army arrived, and the second day's fighting was 




General Ulysses S. Grant 

a triumph for the Union side. The Confederates fell back to 
Corinth, Mississippi. They had lost 1 0,000 men, but could better 
have spared 10,000 more than lose their gallant commander, 
General Johnston, who was killed on the field. The capture of 



44^ The Crisis of Disunion 

Forts Henry and Donelson and the victory of Shiloh cleared 
western Tennessee of Confederate troops/ while General John 
Pope and Commodore Foote.in a parallel campaign brought 
their gunboats down the Mississippi and secured the river as 
far south as the high bluffs of Vicksburg, Mississippi. 

Meanwhile the great river was being opened from the south- 
ern end. New Orleans, which lies some one hundred and twenty- 
five miles up the river, was protected by the strong forts, Jack- 
son and St. Philip, and by a heavy " boom " of chained and 
anchored hulks stretching a quarter of a mile across the cur- 
rent between the forts. On the night of the. twenty-third of 
April, 1862, Captain David G. Farragut, in a most spectacular 
battle, broke the boom and ran the gantlet of the fire of the 
forts. New Orleans was left defenseless. The small Confederate 
army withdrew, and General B. F. Butler entered the city, which 
he ruled for over six months under military regime. The capture 
of New Orleans opened the river as far north as Port Hudson. 
Thus, by midsummer of 1862, only the high bluffs of Vicksburg 
and Port Hudson, with the one hundred and fifty defenseless 
miles of river bank between, were left to the Confederacy.^ 
644. Ten These successes in the West contrasted strikingly with the 

failure in the delays and disappointments of the army in the East ; and when 
poSmac^^^ McClellan was relieved of his command in July, it was natural 
that a Western general should succeed him. Halleck, under 
whose command the brilliant operations in Tennessee had been 
conducted, was called to Washington, July 11, 1862, as general 
in chief of the armies of the United States, to advise the Pres- 
ident and the Secretary of War; while General Pope^ was 

1 President Lincoln immediately began the " reconstruction " of Tennessee 
by appointing Andrew Johnson of that state as military governor. Johnson 
was a man of great energy and ambition, who had worked his way up from a 
tailor's bench to the United States Senate. He belonged to the "poor white" 
class of the South, and was an intensely loyal Union man. 

2 Thesie one hundred and fifty miles, however, were very important as a 
"bridge," over which came immense stores of Louisiana sugar and Texas beef 
and grain for the armies of the Confederacy. 

3 Grant, who should have been the choice, was unpopular with Halleck, and 
besides, his generalship at Shiloh had not been brilliant. 



The Civil War 



447 



given command of a new " Army of Virginia," independent of 
McClellan's diminished Army of the Potomac. 

The ten months that followed, from August, 1862, to June, 
1863, present a dreary record of defeat for the Union cause in 
Virginia. General Lee, with his magnificent corps of lieuten- 
ants, — '' Stonewall" Jackson, Longstreet, Ewell, the Hills, and 




From the " rhotographic History of the Civil War." Copyright by Patriot Publishing Company 

The Army of the Potomac in Camp ^ 

Stuart, — outwitted and outfought the Union commanders at 
every turn. Pope was beaten at a second battle of Bull Run 
(August, 1862), and his entire army forced to retreat on 
Washington.^ McClellan was restored to command,^ and hailed 
with joy by his old soldiers. He stopped Lee's invasion of 



1 An especially humiliating feature of Pope's defeat was the capture of all his 
stores and his own headquarters by a brilliant move of " Stonewall " Jackson. The 
stores, filling a train of cars two miles long, were burned after the Confederates 
had taken all the plunder they could carry ; and the light of the costly bonfire 
could be seen even from Washington. 

2 Lincoln, against the determined protest of Stanton, ITalleck, and others in 
high authority, declared that McClellan was the only man available. 



448 The Crisis of Distinion 

Maryland^ in the bloodiest single day's battle of the war, at 
Sharpsburg on the Antietam Creek (September i6, 1862); 
but with his old reluctance to follow up a victory by crushing 
the foe, he let the shattered Confederate army get back across 
the Potomac to Virginia soil. He was removed again by the 
distressed administration at Washington, and General Burnside 
was put in his place, only to suffer an awful repulse in his reck- 
less assault on the heights of Fredericksburg (December 13, 
1862). Then General Joseph Hooker, '' Fighting Joe," who 
succeeded Burnside, was routed in the three days' fight at 
Chancellors ville (May 1-4, 1863).^ 

645. The The early months of 1863 mark the lowest ebb of the 

lowest point . . , ^_ . ^ . . 

in the Union fortunes 01 the U nion cause, r or nearly two years the superior 

fortunes Federal forces in Virginia had been trying to take Richmond, 
but they had not been able even to hold their own position 
south of the Rappahannock. General Lee was planning another 
invasion of the North. Union soldiers were deserting at the rate 
of a thousand a week,^ and hundreds of officers were finding 
excuses to leave the army for " vacations." The attempts to 
draft new recruits into the army were met with serious resist- 
ance in many states. In New York City the draft riots of 
July, 1863, resulted in the destruction of $1,500,000 worth of 
property and the loss of 1000 lives. The cost of the war was 
enormous; the debt was increasing at the rate of $2,500,000 

1 Lee invaded Maryland for the double purpose of foraging and capturing 
Washington. When asked after the war why he did not move directly on 
Washington after the defeat of Pope, he answered convincingly in a single 
phrase, " Because my men had nothing to eat." 

2 After a day's fighting at Chancellorsville, " Stonewall " Jackson, riding back 
in the twilight with his staff from a reconnoissance, was mistaken by Con- 
federate sharpshooters for a Union officer and fatally shot. His loss was 
the severest blow the Confederate cause suffered during the war. Many in 
the South believe to this day that, had the life of " Stonewall " Jackson been 
spared, they would have been successful in the war. 

3 Hooker, in his testimony to Congress explaining his defeat at Chancellors- 
ville, said : " At the time the army was turned over to me desertions were at the 
rate of two hundred a day. So anxious were parents, wives, brothers, and sisters 
of volunteers to relieve their kindred, that they filled the trains to the army with 
packages of citizens' clothing to assist them in escaping from the service." 



The Civil War 449 

a day. The Secretan- of the Treasur)- was having difficulty in 
borrowing enough money to keep the army in the field. A wide- 
spread con\-iction that Lincoln's administration was a failure 
was shown by the triumph of the Democrats in the elections 
of 1862 in such important states as Xew York, Xew Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. Clement 
^'allandigham, of Ohio, declared in a speech in the House 
early in the year 1863 : '* You have not conquered the South. 
You never \\ill. . . . Money you have expended \\'ithout limit, 
and blood poured out like water. . . . Defeat, debt, taxation, 
and sepulchers, — these are your only trophies.*' ^ 

But the darkest hour is the hour before the dawn. In June, 
1863, the Southern hopes were high. In the West the great 
fortress of Vicksburg, which Grant and Sherman had been 
manoeuvering against for months, stiU blockaded the lower 
Mississippi to the Union fleets ; and in the East, General Lee, 
at the height of his power and popularit)-, was crossing the 
Potomac northward with a magnificent army of 75.000 veterans. 
But on the fourth of July, Lee was leading his defeated army 
back to the Potomac after the tremendous fight at Gettysburg, 
while General Grant was entering Vicksburg in triumph. 

The battle of Getts'sburg (July 1-3, 1863) was the most im- 646.Thebat- 
portant battle of the war, and the only one fought on the free turg 
soil of the North. ^ Kjio\\-ing the widespread discouragement 
in the Northern states and the dissatisfaction in many quarters 
with Lincoln's conduct of the war, Lee hoped that a brilliant 
stroke as near New York as he could get might terrify the 

1 Vallandigham was aftem-ards arrested by General Bumside and court- 
marriaJed for treason. Lincoln, as a grim sort of joke, made his punish- 
ment exile into the lines of the Confederaa.-. Edward E%-eren Hale\famous 
story ~ The Man without a Coimtn,-," appearing in the Atlantic Mmtkh for 
December, 1S63, was written to show the sad failure of such tinpatriotic\on- 
duct as \'allandigham"s. \ 

2 There were several " raids " into Xorthem territory — in Ohio. Indiana, anrf 
Pennsylvania — by the renowned "irregular" cavalry rangers of Morgan. Mosby, 
and StuarL But these raids succeeded only in terrorizing a few \-illages and 
plundering such boot}* as the fl>'ing horsemen could take with them. They 
were a foolish, improductive kind of warfare. 



450 



The Crisis of Disunion 



Northern bankers, and lead them to compel the administra- 
tion to stop the war for lack of funds and recognize the South- 
ern Confederacy. General George G. Meade, who had just 




General Robert E. Lee 



succeeded Hooker (June 27) in the command of the Army of the 
Potomac, met Lee's attack with his fine army of over 80,000 
men securely posted on the heights of Round Top and Ceme- 
tery Ridge, south of the town of Gettysburg. 



The Civil War 451 

The first and second days' fighting (July i, 2) were favorable 
to the Confederates, but reenforcements kept pouring in for 
the Army of the Potomac, and, in spite of heavy losses, the 
Federal position was being strengthened from hour to hour. 
At the beginning of the third day of the fight General Meade 
had over 90,000 men posted on the heights above and around 
Gettysburg. 

Lee, fagged with his immense labors, and desperate in his 647. Pick- 
demand for victory, now failed for once in generalship. Disre- ^"'^ charge 
garding the almost tearful remonstrances of General Longstreet, 
he sent General Pickett with 15,000 men, the flower of the 
Confederate infantry, to carry by storm the impregnable posi- 
tion of the Union troops, under General W. S. Hancock, on 
Cemetery Ridge. It was the most dramatic moment of the war, 
as Pickett's splendid column, in perfect order, swept across 
the wide plain which separated the two armies and dashed up 
the opposite slope in the face of the withering fire of the Union 
guns. The men went down like grain before a hailstorm, but 
still there was no pause. A hundred led by Armistead pierced 
the Union line and planted the flag of the Confederacy on the 
ridge, — the "high-water mark of the Rebellion." But no 
human bravery could stand against the blasting wall of fire 
that closed in upon Pickett's gallant men. The line wavered, 
then stopped, then bent slowly backward, and broke. The day, 
the battle, and the Southern cause were lost ! 

The next day, the " glorious fourth " of July, at evening, 648. The fan 
while the North was celebrating the great victory of Gettys- Juip4f ^1863^' 
burg. General Lee began his slow retreat to the Potomac 
through a heavy, dismal storm of rain. Lee's grief and chagrin 
would have been doubled had he known that, on that same 
dismal fourth of July, General Pemberton, after a valiant 
defense of six months against the superior strategy and num- 
bers of Grant and Sherman, had surrendered the stronghold 
of Vicksburg, with 170 cannon and -50,000 rifles, and had de- 
livered over his starving garrison of 30,000 men as prisoners of 



452 The Crisis of Disunion 

war.^ Five days after the fall of Vicksburg, Port Hudson 
yielded, and the Mississippi was again a Union stream from 
source to mouth. " The Father of Waters," wrote Lincoln 
exultantly, " goes again unvexed to the sea." 



\/ 



The Triumph of the North 



649. The The victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg were the turning 

of the war^" point of the war. Not that the South as yet acknowledged 
defeat or even distress. On the contrary, the tone of her press 
and the utterances of her public men were more confident 
than ever. Newspapers in Richmond and Charleston actually 
hailed Gettysburg as a Confederate victory, presumably because 
Lee had been allowed to withdraw his shattered army across 
the Potomac without molestation.^ But to men who did not let 
their zeal blind them to facts, the disasters which overtook the 
Confederacy at Gettysburg and Vicksburg appeared to be almost 
beyond repair. It was not alone the loss of 60,000 soldiers from 
armies in which every man was sorely needed that made those 
midsummer days of 1863 so calamitous to the South. It was 
even more the change which they brought in the public senti- 
ment of the North, in the attitude of Great Britain toward the 
Confederacy, and in the plan of campaign of the Union 
commanders. 

iThe siege of Vicksburg was the only protracted siege of the war. The 
shelling of the city by Grant's mortars was so severe that many of the people 
lived in underground caves, and the inhabitants and garrison were compelled to 
eat mules, rats, and even shoe leather to keep from starvation. Pemberton held 
out as long as he did in the constant hope that Johnston might break through 
Grant's lines and come to his relief. 

2 Lincoln was much distressed that Meade did not follow Lee up after 
Gettysburg, and crush his army before it could get back over the Potomac. 
" We had them in our grasp," he said ; " we had only to stretch forth our hands 
and they were ours." To Meade he wrote a kindly letter of censure : " I do not 
believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee's 
escape. . . . Your golden opportunity is gone and I am distressed immeasurably 
because of it." Still Meade was not relieved of his command. His army slowly 
followed Lee into Virginia and, after some unimportant skirmishing, went into 
winter quarters at Culpeper, about seventy-five miles northwest of Richmond. 



The Civil War 453 

In the North the bankers, whose cash vaults Lee hoped to 650. Finan- 
close tightly by his invasion of Pennsylvania, now lent to the oUhrNorth" 
government freely; and private individuals bought millions of 
dollars' worth of the '' coupon bonds " issued to support the war. 
Secretary Chase had been obliged to pay 7.3 per cent interest 
on money loaned the government in 1861, when the public 
debt was less than $100,000,000; now, however, he could 
borrow all he wanted at 6 per cent, although the debt had risen 
to over $1,000,000,000. The rate of interest at which a 
country can borrow money is always an index of the confi- 
dence the people have in the stability of the government. Presi- 
dent Lincoln, in his annual message to Congress, December, 
1863, could say : '' All the demands on the Treasury, including 
the pay of the army and navy, have been promptly met and 
fully satisfied. ... By no people were the burdens incident 
to a great war ever more cheerfully borne." ^ 

1 The financial operations of a government are very difficult to make plain 
to the young student. Therefore, although the problems of the Treasury were 
fully as critical a feature of the war as the campaigns of the generals, little is 
said about them in the text. It may be stated in general that the government 
incurred a debt of about ^3,000,000,000 in prosecuting the Civil War. It raised 
its funds chiefly by issues of interest-bearing bonds, — promises to pay back the 
money borrowed at the end of twenty or thirty years. Secretary Chase, early in 
1863, devised a very effective method of selling these bonds, by the creation of 
the national-bank system. Any group of five men, furnishing a specified capital, 
might be granted a charter by the national government to organize a banking 
business, if they purchased United States bonds and deposited them at Wash- 
ington. They were then allowed to issue notes (" bank bills ") up to the value of 
90 per cent (since igoo, up to the full value) of the bonds, and the government 
assumed the responsibility for paying these notes if the bank failed. The bankers, 
of course, besides receiving the interest from their bonds on deposit, made a profit 
by lending their notes (or credit) to their customers at a fair rate of interest. 
The national-bank system was a benefit to all parties concerned. It enabled the 
government to sell its bonds readily ; it gave the capitalists of the country a 
chance to make a profit on their bank notes ; and it gave the borrowing public 
a currency which was " protected " by the government, whether the bank issuing 
it succeeded or failed. There were in 19 13 some 7400 national banks in the 
United States, with an aggregate capital of over |ii, 000,000,000. These national 
banks are not to be confused with the National Bank of 1791-1811, 1816-1836. 
They are private institutions, and enjoy none of the government's favors such 
as are described on page 191. They are called "national " simply because they 
are chartered and inspected by the national government. 



454 T^^^ Crisis of Disunion 

651. Effect of In England, though the T?'e?it affair had been satisfactorily 
of Gettysburg adjusted, the sympathy of the higher classes of society and of 
and vicig- niost of the government officials was decidedly in favor of the 
land South. The long series of Federal reverses in 1862 had 

strengthened their belief that President Lincoln's government 
would fail to restore the Union. Men in high positions in the 
British government openly expressed their confidence in the 
Southern cause.-^ British capitalists bought $10,000,000 worth 
of Confederate bonds offered them at the beginning of 1863, 
when the Southern cause looked brightest. The fall of Vicksburg 
sent the bonds down 2 o per cent in value. The British people 
woke with a shock from their dream of an " invincible South," 
and all hope of aid from Great Britain, as President Davis 
sorrowfully acknowledged in his next message to the Con- 
federate Congress, was lost.^ 

652. The The effect of the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg on 
campaign" ° the conduct of the war was also important. Up to the middle 
^^^^'S^^Vi of the year 1863 there had been no cooperation between the 

Union -armies. The Army of the Potomac, in Virginia, had been 
battling in vain to break through Lee's defense of Richmond. 
The army on the Mississippi had been slowly accomplishing 
its great task of opening the river. Meanwhile a third army 
under Buell, and later under Rosecrans, had with difficulty been 
defending central Kentucky and Tennessee from the advance 
of the Confederate general Braxton Bragg, and had at last forced 

1 Mr. Gladstone, then a cabinet minister, said in a speech at Newcastle, Octo- 
ber 7, 1862 : " There is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of 
the South have made an army ; they are making, it appears, a navy ; and they 
have made what is more than either, — a nation. . . . We may anticipate with 
certainty the success of the Southern states so far as their separation from the 
North is concerned." 

2 While Mason was trying to get help in England for the Confederacy, 
Slidell was busy on the same errand in France, At a meeting with Emperor 
Napoleon III, in July, 1862, Slidell made the offer of 100,000 bales of cotton 
(worth $12,500,000) if Napoleon would send a fleet to break the blockade of 
the Southern ports. Napoleon made efforts to get Great Britain and Russia 
to join him in demanding from the administration at Washington the inde- 
pendence of the South, but with no success. After Gettysburg all such efforts 
were stopped. 



The Civil War 



455 



him to retire to Chattanooga in the southeastern corner of 
Tennessee. -"^ The fall of Vicksburg left the troops of Grant and 
Sherman free to move eastward across Mississippi and Ala- 
bama, driving Johnston's inferior forces before them, and to 



js,^^i^,-^^^L^^ 




From the " Photographic History o£ the Civil War." Copyright by Patriot PubHshing Company 

Waitiiig for Letters from Home 



join with Rosecrans at Chattanooga and push the Confederate 
armies across the lower end of the Appalachian range into 
Georgia. While this great flanking movement was going on 

1 Simultaneously with Lee's invasion of Maryland in September, 1862, Bragg 
had invaded Kentucky, appealing to the proslavery and states-rights sentiment 
in the state with the pompous manifesto, " Kentuckians, 1 offer you the oppor- 
tunity to free yourselves from the tyranny of a despotic ruler." Bragg brought 
15,000 stands of arms for the Kentuckians, but they did not join his army. Buell 
turned him back from Kentucky in the battle of Perryville (October 8, 1862), 
and Rosecrans, after a tremendous three days' fight at Murfreesboro, Tennessee 
(December 31-January 2), compelled Bragg to retire to Chattanooga. The 
acquisition of eastern Tennessee was especially desired by Lincoln, on account 
of the great number of Union men in that part of the state. We have already 
seen how, after Grant's victories at Forts Henry and Donelson, Lincoln had 
appointed Andrew Johnson as military governor of Tennessee (p. 446, note i). 



456 TJie Crisis of Disunion 

from the West, the Army of the Potomac was to press down on 
Lee from northern Virginia. So the forces of the Confederacy 
would be crushed between the two great Union armies in 
Virginia and Georgia. This plan of wrapping the Union armies 
about the Confederacy and squeezing the life out of it was 
called the " anaconda policy." It was in view of this coopera- 
tion of all the Union forces in 1863 that General Sherman 
later wrote, " The war did not begin professionally until after 
Gettysburg and Vicksburg." 

Next to Richmond and Vicksburg, the most important mili- 
tary position in the Confederacy was Chattanooga. This city, 
protected by the deep and wide Tennessee River on the north, 
and the high ridges of the Appalachian Mountains on the south, 
guarded the passes into the rich state of Georgia, the " keystone 
of the Confederacy." Rosecrans, as we have seen, confronted 
Bragg at Chattanooga in the autumn of 1863. Bragg retired 
before his opponent across the Tennessee River into the moun- 
tains of the northeastern corner of Georgia, then suddenly turned 
on him at Chickamauga Creek, where Rosecrans had hastily 
concentrated his forces. 

The battle of Chickamauga, which followed Rosecrans^s 
frantic effort to get his army together (September 19-20, 
1863), would have been as complete a disaster for the Union 
cause as Bull Run, had it not been for the intrepid conduct of 
one man. General George H. Thomas. Rosecrans had given a 
blundering order which left a wide gap in the Union lines. 
Into this gap the Confederate regiments poured, driving the 
entire right wing of Rosecrans's army off the field in a panic, 
and sweeping Rosecrans with his men back to Chattanooga, 
where he telegraphed Halleck that his army was " overwhelmed 
by the enemy." But General Thomas on the left, with only 
25,000 men, refused to leave the field. Forming his men into 
a convex front like a horseshoe, he stood firm against the 
furious onslaught of 60,000 Confederate troops, from half past 
three in the afternoon till the deep twilight four hours later. 



The Civil War 



457 



It was the most magnificent defensive fighting of the war. It 

almost turned defeat into victory. It earned for General 

Thomas the proud title of the " Rock of Chickamauga," and 

justified his promotion by Grant to the command of the Army 

of the Cumberland in place of Rosecrans. After his dearly 

bought victory at Chickamauga, General Bragg proceeded to lay 

siege to Chattanooga. 

General Grant, who had been put in command of the armies 654. The bat- 

of the West as a reward for his capture of Vicksburg, now Chattanooga 

dispatched the Army of the November 
^ •' 23-25, 1863 

Tennessee (as the Vicksburg 

army was henceforth called), 
under General Sherman, to 
join Thomas at Chattanooga, 
and, by the middle of No- 
vember, was ready with the 
combined armies to begin 
operations against Bragg and 
Johnston. The three days' 
battle around Chattanooga 
(November 23-25) was a fit- 
ting climax to Grant's splen- 
did achievements of the year 
1863. The enthusiasm his 
presence inspired in the Union 
armywas unbounded. On the 
twenty-fourth of November Hooker seized the top of Look- 
out Mountain in the ^' Battle above the Clouds." On the 
twenty-fifth General Thomas's troops were ordered to seize 
the Confederate rifle pits at the foot of Missionary Ridge. 
They seized the pits, and then, without waiting for further 
orders, stormed up the steep and crumbling sides of the 
mountain in the face of a deadly fire from thirty cannon 
trained on every path, and drove the astounded Bragg, with 
his staff and his choicest infantry, from the crest of the 




General Philip H. Sheridan 



458 The Crisis of Disimion 

h\\\} The Confederate general fled southward into Georgia, 
burning his depots and bridges behind him. 

655. Grant On the first day of the session of Congress, which assem- 
command of bled a fortnight after the battle of Chattanooga, Representa- 
tive army, ^.j^g Washbum of Illinois introduced a bill to revive the rank of 

March 9, 1864 

lieutenant general, which had not been held by any general in 
the field since George Washington. Everybody knew that the 
new honor was intended for General Grant. The bill was 
passed February 29, 1864, and immediately Grant was sum- 
moned to Washington by the President, and in the presence of 
the cabinet and a few invited guests was formally invested with 
the rank of lieutenant general and the command, under the 
President, of all the armies of the United States (March 9, 1864). 
Grant made his dear friend and companion in arms. General 
William T. Sherman, his successor in the command of the armies 
of the West, while he established his own headquarters with the 
Army of the Potomac. 

656. Plans of The plan of campaign was now very simple. Sherman, with 
Sherman, the armies of the Ohio (General Schofield), the Cumberland 
1864 (General Thomas), and the Tennessee (General McPherson), 

100,000 strong, was to advance from Chattanooga to Atlanta 
against Joseph E. Johnston, who had succeeded Bragg. Grant, 
with the Army of the Potomac (General Meade still nominally 
in command), was to resume the campaign against Richmond, 
in which McClellan, Pope, Bumside, and Hooker had all failed. 
Both Grant and Sherman outnumbered their opponents, Lee 
and Johnston, two to one ; but the advantage was not so great 
as the size of their armies would indicate, for Sherman was to 
move througn a hostile country, with his base of supplies at 

1 This impetuous charge of 20,000 Union troops up the sides of Missionary 
Ridge was as dramatic and courageous as the famous charge of Pickett's brigade 
at Gettysburg. The leader of the charge was " Phil " Sheridan, a young Irish gen- 
eral, who had distinguished himself for bravery in the battles of Perryville and 
Murfreesboro, and who later became the most famous cavalry commander in the 
Union army. The battle of Chattanooga was the only one of the war in which 
the four greatest Union generals — Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas — 
took part. 



The Civil War 459 

Louisville, Kentucky, hundreds of miles away, and leaving an 

ever-lengthening line of posts to be guarded in his rear ; while 

Grant was assuming the offensive on soil which he had never 

trodden before, but every inch of which was familiar to Lee's 

veterans of the Army of Northern Virginia. 

On the fourth of May, 1864, Grant's army crossed the Rapi- 657. The 

dan, and began to fight its way through the Wilderness, where campa^^nf 

Hooker had been defeated in the battle of Chancellorsville iust a May-june, 

■* 1864 

year earlier. Though his losses were heavy (17,500 men in the 
Wilderness fights), Grant turned his face steadily toward Rich- 
mond. '' I propose to fight it out on this line," he wrote Halleck, 
'' if it takes all summer." ^ At Cold Harbor (June 3) he attacked 
Lee's strongly fortified position in front, and lost 7000 men in 
an hour, in an assault almost as rash as Bumside's at Fredericks- 
burg.^ After this awful battle. Grant led the Army of the Poto- 
mac down to the James River to renew the attack on Richmond 
from the south. In the Wilderness campaign of forty days, from 
the Rapidan to the James, Grant had lost 55,000 men (almost as 
many as Lee had in his entire armiy), but he had at least shown 
Lee the novel sight of a Union commander who did not retreat 
when he was repulsed or rest when he was victorious. 

1 His men were with him, too, keyed to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. The 
writer has heard from the lips of one of the three surviving members of Company 
A of the Twelfth Massachusetts regiment the thrilling story of the resumption 
of the march southward after the terrible losses in the Wilderness. The orders to 
move came one stormy evening, just as the heavy clouds were parting, and the sol- 
diers were uncertain whether the column was headed northward in retreat or south- 
ward for Richmond. As they came out upon an open road and were greeted by 
the stars, the shout came from the head of the column, " Boys, we are leaving the 
North Star behind us ! " "I have heard the army cheer after victor)'," said the vet- 
eran, " but I have never heard cheering like that which swept down the march- 
ing column then." 

2 Horace Porter, an aid-de-camp of General Grant, tells in the Ceiitnry Mag. 
azine for March, 1897, how the brave Union soldiers were seen the night before 
the terrible assault at Cold Harbor quietly pinning on the backs of their coats 
slips of paper with their name and address, so that their bodies might be taken 
back to their families in the North. Grant himself confesses in his " Memoirs," 
written nearly twenty years after the battle, that no advantage whatever was gained 
to compensate for the heavy loss which we sustained." The attack at Cold Har- 
bor was a serious mistake on Grant's part. 



460 



The Crisis of Disunion 



Sherman left Chattanooga two days after Grant crossed the 
Rapidan (May 6). Mile by mile he forced Johnston back, until 
by the middle of July he was in sight of Atlanta. Jefferson 
Davis replaced Johnston by Hood, but it was of no avail. 
Sherman beat Hood in several engagements before Atlanta, 
and entered the city on the third of September, 1864. 




From the "Photographic History of the Civil War." Copyright by Patriot Publishing Company 

The Confederate Trenches before Atlanta 

While Grant was fighting his way through the Wilderness, and 
Sherman was slowly advancing on Atlanta, the national conven- 
tions met to nominate candidates for the presidential election 
of 1864. 'Secretary Chase was ambitious for the Republican 
nomination, and when one of his friends in Congress published 
a circular in his behalf, he confessed his ambition to Lincoln, who 
generously refused to consider it a reason for removing Chase 
from the head of the Treasury Department. Chase was a very 
able man, — " about one and a half times bigger than any other 



The Civil War 461 

man I 've known," Lincoln said once, — but he was also very 
pompous and conceited, and needed little persuasion to believe 
.that he was indispensable to the country's salvation. His sur- 
pri«e..and xhagrin were, therefore, great when his canvass fell 
flat. He withdrew in February, and on June 7 Lincoln was nomi- 
nated by the convention at Baltimore.^ The Democrats met at 
Chicago (August 29) and nominated General McClellan, rec- 
ommending in their platform that " after four years of failure 
to restore the Union by the experiment of war . . . immediate 
efforts be made for the cessation of hostilities . . . and peace 
be made on the basis of the federal union of the states." ^ 

All through the summer of 1864 there was doubt and dis- 660. The 
couragement in the Republican ranks. Grant's Wilderness L^ncom°° °* 
campaign brought no comfort to the administration. Lincoln 
himself at one period had no hope of being reelected. But the 
autumn brought changes in the Unionist fortunes. In August, 
Admiral Farragut sailed into the harbor of Mobile, Alabama, 
by an exploit as daring as the running of the New Orleans forts, 
and deprived the Confederacy of its last stronghold on the Gulf 
of Mexico. In September, Sherman entered Atlanta after a four 
months' campaign against Johnston and Hood. And in October, 
Sheridan, by his wonderful ride up the Shenandoah valley, 
'' from Winchester twenty miles away," literally turned defeat 
into victory and saved Washington from the raid of General 
Early's cavalry. These Union victories were the most powerful 
campaign arguments for the Republican cause. " Sherman and 
Farragut," cried Seward, " have knocked the bottom out of the 

1 Chase harbored some ill will toward the administration," and on June 29 
resigned his secretaryship rather petulantly. Lincoln accepted the resignation, 
but showed his utter magnanimity by nominating Chase to the position of Chief 
Justice of the Supreme Court (December 6, 1864), made vacant by the death of 
the aged Roger B. Taney. This gracious act drew from Chase a beautiful letter 
of gratitude. 

2 It is only fair to say that McClellan did not consent to the platform which 
declared the war a " failure." Nevertheless it is little credit to him, who was 
once in command of the United States armies and supported by Lincoln to the 
utmost of the. President's ability, to be now associated with a party that was try- 
ing to discredit the war and " push Lincoln from his throne." 



462 



The Crisis of Disunion 



Chicago platform." Lincoln was reelected in November by an 
electoral vote of 212 to 21, and a popular majority of nearly 
500,000. The election meant the indorsement by the people 
of the North of Lincoln's policy of continuing the war until the 
South recognized the supremacy of the national government at 
Washington throughout the United States. 




Admiral Farragut attacking the Forts in Mobile Harbor 

Before the year 1864 ended, more good news came from the 
seat of war. When Atlanta fell, Hood, thinking to draw Sher- 
man back from further invasion of Georgia, and at the same 
time to regain Tennessee, made a dash northward against 
Thomas, who had been left to protect Nashville and Chatta- 
nooga. Sherman trusted the reliable Thomas to take care of 
Tennessee, and, boldly severing all connection with his base of 
supplies, started on his famous march "from Atlanta to the 
sea," 300 miles across the state of Georgia. He met with no 
resistance. The march through Georgia was more like a con- 
tinuous picnic of three months for his 60,000 troops than like 



The Civil War 



463 



a campaign. They lived on the fat of the land, — the newly 
gathered harvests of corn and grain, abundance of chickens, tur- 
keys, ducks, pigs, and sweet potatoes. Sherman entered on the 
march with a grim determination to make the state of Georgia 
" an example to rebels," and he carried out his threat. Railroads 
were torn up, public buildings, depots, and machine shops 
burned, stores of cotton destroyed, 10,000 mules and horses 
taken, and the military resources of the state damaged beyond 

repair.^ Reaching the coast in 
December, Sherman easily broke 
through the weak defenses of 
Savannah, and on Christmas eve 
President Lincoln read a tele- 
gram from him announcing " as 
a Christmas gift the city of Savan- 
nah, with 150 heavy guns, plenty 
of ammunition, and about 25,000 
bales of cotton." 

Meanwhile the complete sue- 662. Thom- 
General Sherman ^^'^ ^^ Sherman's campaign was t'^"^^:^,,^ 

insured by the failure of Hood's December 15, 

1864 
plan to dislodge Thomas from Nashville. For had Hood retaken 

Tennessee and driven Thomas back into Kentucky, he might 
have turned eastward rapidly, and, summoning the Carolinas to 
his banners, have confronted Sherman with a most formidable 
army barring his march north from Savannah. But Thomas 
was equal to the occasion. On the fifteenth of December, before 




1 Sherman has been execrated by Southern writers for the " barbarity " of 
his soldiers during this march thro-ogk^eorgia ; and it is certain that much 
irregular plundering and thievery were done^^h as taking jewelry from women, 
burning private houses, fend wantonly insulting >jje feelings of the inhabitailt^s. 
Sherman's chief of cavalry, Kilpatrick, was a coarse and brutal man, who w^ls 
responsible for much of the damage. Then a crqvfd of " bummers " followej^-fhe 
army, out of the reach o\ Sherman's officers.^^ij^lthough Sherman was^e^ere in 
this march, it must be said m^iis credit thatir^ gave orde-r&J^Q hay^ private property 
respected, and there is no compIatTTroThis soldiers' treating defenseless women 
as the armies of European conquerors were accustomed to do. 



464 



TJie Crisis of Disunion 



663. The 
Hampton 
Roads confer- 
ence, Febru- 
ary 3, 1865 



664. The fall 
of Richmond, 
Aprils, 1865 



665. Lee's 
surrender at 
Appomattox, 
April 9, 1865 



Nashville, he almost annihilated Hood's army and drove the 
remnants out of Tennessee. The battle of Nashville was the 
deathblow of the Confederacy west of the Alleghenies. Virginia 
and the Carolinas alone were left to subdue. 

Before the campaign of 1865 opened, there was an attempt 
to close the war by diplomacy. On February 3, 1865, Vice 
President Stephens of the Confederacy, with two other com- 
missioners, met President Lincoln and Secretary Seward on 
board a United States vessel, at Hampton Roads, to discuss 
teitns of peace. But as Lincoln would listen to no terms what- 
ever except on the basis of a reunited country, the conference 
came to naught. The Southern commissioners were pleased to 
interpret Lincoln's terms as nothing less than '^ unconditional 
submission to the mercy of the conquerors."^ 

The next month the Army of the Potomac renewed its 
operations against Richmond. The stronghold of Petersburg, 
to the south, fell on Sunday, April 2. Jefferson Davis was at 
worship in St. Paul's church in Richmond, when news was 
brought that the city could no longer be held. Hastily collect- 
ing his papers, he fled with his cabinet southward. On the 
third of April the Union troops entered the city, followed the next 
day by President Lincoln, who spoke only words of conciliation 
and kindness in " the enemy's capital." Lee, with his dwindling 
army, moved westward toward the mountains, but Grant fol- 
lowed him hard, while Sheridan's cavalry encircled his forces. 
Brought to a standstill, Lee consented to listen to Grant's 
terms for surrender. 

The two great generals met in a farmhouse at Appomattox, on 
the ninth of April, 1865, — Lee, the vanquished, in full uniform, 
with a jeweled sword at his side ; Grant, the victor, in the dusty 

1 Jefferson Davis, in a speech at Richmond on February 6, said of this con- 
ference : " Mr. Lincoln spoke of a common country. I can have no common 
country with the Yankees. . . . With the Confederacy I will live or die. . . . 
Thank God, I represent a people too proud to . . . bow the neck to mortal 
man." After the war Mr. Davis adopted a milder tone, and, while never abandon- 
ing the justice of the Southern cause, advised the new generation at the South 
to aid in increasing the prosperity and harmony of our common country. 










/^fev> /U^t^-f^^O (^/iflA^ /^/ti^ ^^ff^ /^-i— 

Lee's Letter to Grant respecting the Surrender of the Confederate 

Army of Northern Virginia 

465 



466 TJie Crisis of Disunion 

fatigue coat of a common soldier, with only the lieutenant 
general's stars on his shoulders. After a few minutes of 
courteous conversation recalling the days of their old com- 
radeship in arms in the Mexican War, Grant wrote out the 
terms of surrender. They were generous, as befitted the recon- 
ciliation of brother Americans. The Army of Northern Vir- 
ginia was to lay down its arms, but the officers were to retain 
their horses and side arms, and even the cavalrymen and artil- 
lerymen were to be allowed to keep their horses. " They will 
need them for the spring plowing," said Grant, with his won- 
derful simplicity. Lee accepted the terms with sorrowing 
gratitude, and surrendered his army of 26,765 men.^ When the 
Union soldiers heard the good news they began to fire salutes, 
but Grant stopped them, saying, " The war is over ; the rebels 
are our countrymen again." Lee had hinted that his men were" 
hungry, and Grant immediately ordered the distribution of 
25,000 rations to the Confederate army. 
666. The With the fall of Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army 

the confed- the Confederacy collapsed.^ It is a marvel that it fought through 
eracy ^|^g j^g^. ^^^j. q£ ^^iq war. For the South was brought to the 

point of actual destitution. The paper money which the Confed- 
eracy issued had depreciated so much that it took $1000 to buy a 
barrel of flour and $30 to buy a pound of tea. Its credit was dead 
in Europe and its bonds were worthless. When the blockade 
of their ports stopped the export of cotton, the Southerners 

1 As Lee rode back to his army after the conference with Grant, the soldiers 
crowded around him, blessing him. Tears came to his eyes as he made his fare- 
well address of three brief sentences': "We have fought through the war 
together. I have done the best I could for you. My heart is too full to say 
more." At the close of the war this noble and heroic man accepted the presi- 
dency of Washington College in \"irginia, which he served with devotion for the 
five years of life that remained to him. 

2 Joseph E. Johnston surrendered his army of 37,000 men to Sherman near 
Durham, North Carolina, on April 26 : Generals Tavlor in Alabama and Kirby 
Smith in Arkansas turned over the armies under their command to the Union 
officers in the South and Southwest. In all 174,000 Confederate soldiers laid 
down their arms at the close of the war. Jefferson Davis was captured on May 10 
at Irwinville, Georgia, and imprisoned two years at Fortress Monroe. After his 
release he lived quietly at the South till his death, December 6, 1889. 



The Civil Wa}- 467 

planted their fields with corn and grain. But the lack of means 
of transportation made it almost impossible to distribute the 
products of the farms to the soldiers at the front. While 
Sherman's army was reveling in the abundance of the farms 
and harvests of central Georgia, the knapsacks found on the 
poor fellows who fell in the defense of Richmond contained 
only scanty rations of corn bread and bacon. The women of 
the South, accustomed to handsome dress and dainty fare, wore 
homespun gowns and cheap rough boots, and cheerfully ate 
porridge and drank '' coffee " made of roasted sweet potatoes. 
They knew no hardships but the failure of fathers and brothers 
and sons in battle ; they were visited by no calamities except 
the presence of the hated " Yankee " soldier. It is impossible 
for the student of history to-day to feel otherwise than that the 
cause for which the South fought the war of 1 861- 1865 was 
an unworthy cause, and that the victory of the South would 
have been a calamity for every section of our country. But 
the indomitable valor and utter self-sacrifice with which the 
South defended that cause both at home and in the field must 
always arouse our admiration. 

Friday, the fourteenth of April, 1865, was a memorable day in 
our history. It was the fourth anniversary of the surrender of 
Fort Sumter. A great celebration was held at Charleston, and 
General Robert Anderson raised above the fort the selfsame tat- 
tered flag which he had hauled down after Beauregard's bombard- 
ment in 1 86 1. William Lloyd Garrison was present. Flowers 
were strewn in his path by the liberated slaves. He spoke at 
the banquet held that evening in Charleston, and the echoes of 
his voice reached a grave over which stood a marble stone 
engraved with the single word " Calhoun. " 

On the evening of the same day President Lincoln, seeking 667. The 
relief from the crushing responsibilities of his office, was sitting of^pr^gfd*ent° 
in a box at Ford's theater in Washington, with his wife and Lincoln, 

° April 14, 1865 

two guests, when a miserable, half-crazy actor named Booth 
stepped into the box and shot the President in the back of the 



468 



Th^ Crisis of Distmion 



head.^ Lincoln was carried unconscious to a private house 
across the street and medical aid was summoned. But the pre- 
cious life, the most pre- 
cious of the land and of the 
century, was ebbing fast. 
Early in the morning of 
the fifteenth of April, sur- 
rounded by his prostrated 
family and official friends, 
Abraham Lincoln died. He 
had brought the storm- 
tossed ship of state safely 
into port. The exultant 
shores were ringing with 
the people's shouts of 
praise and rejoicing. But 
in the hour of victory the 
great Captain lay upon the 
deck — '^ fallen cold and 
dead." ^ 

Words have no power to 
tell the worth of Abraham 
Lincoln. His name, linked 
with the immortal Washing- 
ton's, is forever enshrined 
in the hearts of the American people, for he was the savior of 
our country as Washington was its founder and father. 




The House in which Abraham 

Lincoln died 

Now used as a Lincoln Museum 



1 The assassination of Lincoln was part of a deep-laid plot to kill several of 
the high officers of the Union. Secretary Seward, who was abed suffering from 
injuries received in a runaway accident, was stabbed severely the same night,, 
and his son Frederick was injured while defending his father's life. Both men 
recovered. Grant was proscribed also, but the assassin lost courage apparently 
after gazing into the general's carriage window. The wretch Booth fell to the 
stage in trying to escape, and broke his leg. He was soon caught in a bam in 
Virginia, and was shot after the bam had been set on fire. 

2 Every student should leam by heart Walt Whitman's superb elegy od- 
Lincolnj " O Captain ! my Captain 1 " 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
By Augustus St. Gaudens 



The Civil War • 469 

Our children shall behold his fame, 
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first American. ^ 

Stanton, the great Secretary of War, pronounced Abraham 
Lincoln's best eulogy, when he stood with streaming eyes by 
the bedside of the martyred President and murmured with 
choking voice, '^ Now he belongs to the ages." 



Emancipation 

Although slavery was the cause of the Civil War, both the 668. Purpose 
North and the South insisted that the war was not begun on ° ^^^ "^^^ 
account of slavery. The South declared that it was fighting for 
its constitutional rights, denied by a hostile majority in Congress 
and destroyed by the election of a purely sectional President ; 
while the North, with equal emphasis, insisted that it took up 
arms not to free the slaves but to preserve the Union. Lincoln 
thought slavery a great moral, social, and political evil, and 
never hesitated to say so ; but he repeatedly declared that 
neither the President nor Congress had any right to interfere 
with slavery in those states where it was established by law, and 
assured the South that he would not attack their institution so 
long as it was confined to those states. The day after the dis- 
aster at Bull Run (July 21, 186 1), both branches of Congress 
passed a resolution to the effect that " this war is not waged . . . 
in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or 
subjugation, or of overthrowing or interfering with the rights 
or established institutions of those [seceding] states, but to 
defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution." 

But it soon became evident that the slaves were a valuable 669. slaves 
war asset to the South, and Congress began to treat them as "contraband" 
" property " which could be confiscated. In a series of acts 

1 James Russell Lowell, " Commemoration Ode," read at the memorial services 
for Harvard men who fell in the war (July 21, 1S65). 



470 ~ TJie Crisis of Disiinio7i 

beginning in August, 1861, Congress declared that all negroes 
employed in a military capacity by the South, as workers on 
forts or trenches or in the transportation of stores or ammuni- 
tion, should be seized ; that slaves escaping to the Union lines 
should not be returned ; and that all slaves in places conquered 
and held by the Union armies should be free. Two generals in 
the field went even further than Congress. Fremont in Missouri 
and Hunter in South Carolina, on their own responsibility, issued 
military proclamations emancipating all the slaves in the districts 
subject to their authority. 
670. Lin- President Lincoln signed the Confiscation Acts of Congress 

OH emanci- with reluctance, and immediately disavowed and annulled the 
^8&j°°' ^^^^' proclamations of Fre'mont and Hunter, to the great disappoint- 
ment of thousands of radical antislavery men of the North. To 
preserve and cherish the Union sentiment in the loyal slave- 
holding states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, seemed to 
him the most immediate duty of his administration. If he could 
get these border states to lead the way in the peaceful emanci- 
pation of their slaves, he was in hopes that their example would 
prevail with the states in secession further south. At any rate, 
he was sure that any hasty measures for negro emancipation, 
either by Congress or by the military authorities, would drive 
these border slave states into the Confederacy and make more 
difficult the task of preserving the Union. 

Accordingly the President, in a special message to Congress, 
March 6, 1862, recommended that a law be passed pledging 
the United States government to cooperate with any state in the 
emancipation of its slaves, by compensating the owners of the 
slaves for their loss. He invited the congressmen of the border 
states to a conference, and urged them to contribute their valu- 
able aid toward preserving the Union by the acceptance of 
this plan of " compensated emancipation." But they hung 
back, doubting the power or the will of the government to 
deal fairly with them. Lincoln could get no support, either 
from his cabinet or from Congress, in spite of repeated efforts, 



The Civil War 4^1 

and he sorrowfully gave up the realization of this wise and 

humane policy of emancipation (July, 1862).^ 

Meanwhile Congress had passed an act in April abolishing 671. slavery 

slavery in the District of Columbia, with a compensation to the the terrl- ^^ 

owner of $^00 for each slave liberated: and two months later Tories, June 

'^^ ' 19, 1862 

fulfilled the pledges of the platform on which Lincoln was 

elected, by prohibiting slavery in all the territories of the United 

States and in all territory which might be acquired by the United 

States in the future (June 19, 1862). 

After the failure of the border states to accept the compen- 672. Pressure 
sated-emancipation scheme, the President grew more favorable to Lincoln to^ 
the idea of military emancipation. The pressure brought to bear ^J®® ^^® 
on him to liberate the slaves was enormous. The radical anti- 
slavery men of the North wanted to know how long the evil which 
had brought on the war was to be tolerated,^ and our ministers 
abroad were writing home that the sympathy of Europe could not 
be expected by the North until it was clear that the war was for the 
extermination of slavery and not for the subjugation of the South. 

At the cabinet meeting of July 22, 1862, therefore, President 
Lincoln read a paper announcing his intention of declaring free, 
on the first of the following January, the slaves of all people 
then in rebellion against the authority of the United States. 
The members of the cabinet approved the paper, but Seward 

1 It is doubtful in the extreme if the adoption of Lincoln's plan by the border 
states would have had any effect on the seceding states or shortened the war 
a day. The failure of the plan, however, was about the keenest political disap>- 
pointment in Lincoln's life. The slaves in the four border states of Delaware, 
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri numbered 430,000, and at |!4oo apiece their 
emancipation would have cost the government about gi 75, 000,000, or the cost of 
87 days of war. Lincoln had no doubt that the emancipation of these slaves would 
shorten the war by more than 87 days, but one sees no ground for such confidence. 

2 Horace Greeley, editor of the influential New York Tributie, -wrotQ an editorial 
in August, 1862, which he called the" Prayer of Twenty Millions," taking the Presi- 
dent severely to task for his " mistaken deference to rebel slavery," and calling on 
him to execute the Confiscation Acts immediately. Lincoln replied in a famous 
letter, in which he declared that he was acting as seemed best to him for the pres- 
ervation of the Union. That was his " paramount object." " If I could save the 
Union without freeing any slave, I would do it ; if I could save the Union by 
freeing all the slaves, I would do it. , . . Whatever I do about slavery and the 
colored race, I do because I believe it helps save the Union." 



4/2 TJie Crisis of Disiniion 

suggested that the moment was inopportune for its publication. 
McClellan had just been removed frorn his command after the 
futile Peninsular campaign, and the nev^ generals, Halleck and 
Pope, were as yet untried in the East. Would it not be better to 
wait for a Union victory before publishing the proclamation ? 
Lincoln agreed with Seward, and put the paper in his desk. 

t/^7w0 ^ /wCCt^ <w^^^ A<r».A*y a^*-^eO^ it:^ ^/t<»yl<r>t/ «^ 

Facsimile of the Closing Words of the Emancipation 
Proclamation 

673. The The dark days of the second Bull Run and Pope's retreat 

Pr^ciTmaUon"! followed (August, 1862) ; but when McClellan repulsed Lee's 
J^"^"^ ^' invasion of Maryland at Antietam Creek (September 16), Lin- 
coln thought that the favorable moment had come. Accord- 
ingly he published the warning announcement, September 22, 
1862, and on New Year's Day, 1863, issued the famous Emanci- 
pation Proclamation, designating the states and parts of states 




TJie Civil War 



473 



in which rebellion against the authority and government of the 
United States then existed, and declaring, by virtue of the power 
vested in him as commander in chief of the army and navy of 
the United States, that " all persons held as slaves within such 
designated states and parts of states are, and henceforward 
shall be, free." 

This immortal proclamation is one of the landmarks of uni- 
versal history. It announced the liberation of three and a half 




Map showing how the Slaves were emancipated 



million slaves. It changed the status of nearly one eighth of 
the inhabitants of this country, from that of chattels bought and 
sold like live stock in the auction market to that of men and 
women endowed with the right to labor, like other human 
beings, for employers whom they chose and under terms to 
which they agreed. 

But splendid as this proclamation was, it was nevertheless 674. The 
only a war measure. While the President as commander in Jniy a'^ar 
chief of the army could confiscate the '' property " of men in measure 
rebellion against the government, by declaring their slaves free, 



474 ^^^^ Crisis of Distmion 

neither he nor Congress could permanently alter the constitu- 
tions of the states. Slavery was legally established in the states 
south of Mason and Dixon's line, and the only way it could be 
permanently abolished in those states was either by the action 
of the states themselves or by an amendment to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States. Lincoln's proclamation did not free 
a single slave in the loyal slaveholding states of Kentucky, Mis- 
souri, Maryland, and Delaware. And when the seceded states 
should cease to be " in rebellion against the authority of the 
United States," there was nothing to hinder their legislatures 
from passing laws to reenslave the negroes. In order to have 
emancipation permanent, then, the Constitution must be amended 
so as to prohibit slavery in the whole of the United States. 
675. The Such an amendment was passed through Congress on January 

Amendment 3 ^ > i ^ ^ 5 , by the necessary two-thirds vote, amid great enthusiasm, 
^^^5 and the House adjourned " in honor of the immortal and sub- 

lime event." The amendment provides that " neither slavery 
nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within 
the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction." ^ 
The amendment was duly ratified by three fourths of the states, 
including eight of the states of the late Confederacy, and on 
December 18, 1865, was proclaimed part of the Constitution of 
the United States, the supreme law of the land. 

Whether the curse of slavery could have been removed with- 
out war is a question no one can answer. Certain it is that be- 
fore the war, in sptte of political compromises of forty years, in 
spite of the labors of the greatest statesmen and orators to 
preserve concord between the North and the South, in spite of 
the mobs that assaulted the abolitionists in Boston and the voices 
that rebuked the '' fire eaters " in Charleston, the argument 

1 Of course the exception in the middle of the amendment refers to the labor 
of convicts in prisons or workhouses. The amendment has been violated since 
our acquisition of the Philippine Islands in 1898, for slavery exists on some of 
those islands, though they are " under the jurisdiction " of the United States, 
But it is a condition which we inherited with the islands, and vvhigh we hope to 
remedy as soon as possible. 



The Civil War 475 

over slavery grew more and more bitter and the hold of slavery 
on the country firmer and firmer each year. When we consider 
that the thirteenth amendment to our Constitution might have 
been the prohibition of Congress ever to disturb slavery in the 
Southern states/ instead of the eternal banishment of slavery 
from our land, we may say that the awful sacrifices of the Civil 
War were not made in vain.^ 

REFERENCES 

The Opposing Forces : James Schouler, History of the Lhtited 
States, Vol. VI, chap, i, section 3; chap, ii, sections i, 2j J. C. Ropes, 
Story of the Civil War, Vol. I, chaps, vii, viii ; A. B. Hart, American 
History told by Contanporaries, Vol. IV, Nos. 75-83;]. W. Draper, 
The Civil War in America, Vol. II, chaps, xxxvii-xxxix ; Jefferson 
Davis, Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, Vol. I, part iv, chaps, i-iv ; 
J. K. Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms (American Nation Series), chaps, 
i-iii ; T. A. Dodge, A Bird''s-eye View of the Civil War, chaps, ii, xxv. 

From Bull Run to Gettysburg: Hosmer, chaps, iv-xiii, xv-xix ; 
Dodge, chaps, iv-xxvi ; Ropes, Vol. I, chaps, ix-xii ; Vol. II, chaps, 
i-vii ; Draper, Vol. II, chaps, xlix-lix ; Schouler, Vol. VI, chap, i, 
sections 4-14; chap, ii, sections 1-4; U. S. Grant, Pejsonal Memoirs, 
Vol. I, chaps, xx-xxxix; J. W. Burgess, The Civil War and the Con- 
stitutioji, Vol. I, chaps, viii- xi ; Vol. II, chaps, xii-xxv ; J. F. Rhodes, 
History of the United States from the Compromise of 18^0, Vol. Ill, chap, 
xvi ; Vol. IV, chaps, xvii-xx ; NiCOLAY and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, a 
History, Vols. III-VII. 

The Triumph of the North : Nicolay and Hay, Vols. VIII-X ; J. K. 
Hosmer, The Outcome of the Civil War (Am. Nation), chaps, i-xiii, 
xvii ; Schouler, Vol. VI, chaps, ii, iii ; Rhodes, Vol. IV, chaps, xxi- 
xxiii ; Vol. V, chaps, xxiv, xxv; Burgess, Vol. II, chaps, xxvi-xxxii ; 
Dodge, chaps, xxvii-xl ; Draper, Vol. Ill; Grant, Vol. II. 

1 The student will remember that Congress, in the last hope of preventing the 
war, actually passed an amendment, February 28, 1861, to the effect that Con- 
gress should never have " the power to abolish or interfere within any state with 
the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service 
i^y the laws of said state'''' (see p. 41S, note). Before the amendment had a fair 
chance to secure ratification by the states the war had broken out. 

2 Besides the enormous debt of some ^3,000,000,000 entailed on the countr)'-, 
and the utter ruin of the wealth of the .South, the war cost over a million lives, 
not counting the maimed and diseased who lived on for a few years or more of 
suffering. There died in hospitals or prisons or on the field of battle an average 
of 700 men a day for four full years. 



4/6 The Crisis of Disunion 

Emancipation : Nicolay and Hay, Vol. IV, chaps, xxii, xxiv ; Vol. 
VI, chaps. V, vi, viii, xix ; Vol. X, chap, iv ; Hosmer, The Appeal to Arf?is, 
chap, xiv; Davis, Vol. II, part iv, chaps, xxv, xxvi ; A. B. Hart, Salmon 
P. Chase, chap, x; Contemporaries, Vol. IV, Nos. 1 24-13 1 ; Burgess, 
Vol. II, chaps, xvi, xviii, xx; Draper, Vol. II, chap. Ixiv ; J. G. Blaine, 
Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. I, chap, xx ; Horace Greeley, The 
Afne9'ican Convict, Vol. II, chaps, xi, xii. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Blockade of the Southern Coast: Nicolay and Hay, Vol. V, 
pp. 1-20 ; Rhodes, Vol. V, pp. 396-420 ; Hart, Contemporaries, Vol. IV, 
No. 116; George Cary Eggleston, History of the Confederate IVar, 
Vol. I, pp. 261-267 ; E. S. Maclay, History of the United States Navy, 
Vol. II, pp. 225-281 ; J. R. SoLEY, The Blockade and the Cruisers ; H. L- 
Wait, The Blockade of the Confederacy ( Century Magazine, Vol. XXXIV, 
pp. 914-928). 

2. Great Britain's Attitude during the War : Rhodes, Vol. IV, pp. 
76-95. 337-395; T. K. Lothrop, William H Seward, pp. 271-287, 
320-336; C. F. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, pp. 147-344; Hart, 
Cofttemporaries, Vol. IV, No. 98 ; Hosmer, The Appeal to Arms, pp. 
306-319; Nicolay and Hay, Vol. VI, pp. 49-68; Vol. VIII, pp. 254- 
266; Montague Bernard, The NeiUrality of Gj-eat Britain. 

3. Vicksburg during the Siege : Hart, Vol. IV, No. 119; Schouler, 
Vol. VI, pp. 375-398; Nicolay and Hay, Vol. VIII, pp. 282-310; 
Rhodes, Vol. IV, pp. 312-318; My Cave Life in Vickshirg, by a Lady 
(New York, 1864). 

4. The Draft Riots in New York : Nicolay and Hay, Vol. VII, pp. 
1-27; Rhodes, Vol. IV, pp. 320-332; Greeley, Vol. II, pp. 500-508; 
Hart, Vol. IV, No. 121 ; Harper's Magazine, Vol. XXVII, pp. 559-560 ; 
J. B. Fry, New York and the Conscription of j86j. 

5. The Economic and Social Condition of the South during the War: 
Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 141-144; Cambridge Modern Histojy, Vol. VII, 
pp. 603-621 ; Draper, Vol. Ill, pp. 480-496; Schouler, Vol. VI, pp. 
568-575; Hosmer, The Outcome of the War, pp. 269-289; Woodrow 
Wilson, Histojy of the American People, Vol. IV, pp. 290-312; Davis, 
Vol. I, pp. 471-504; David Dodge, The Cave Dwellers of the Con- 
federacy {Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LVIII, pp. 514-521). 

6. Prisons, North and South: Schouler, Vol. VI, pp. 407-414; 
Nicolay and Hay, Vol. VII, pp. 444-472 ; Rhodes, Vol. V, pp. 483- 
515; Draper, Vol. Ill, pp. 498-520; Hosmer, The Outcome of the War, 
pp. 240-248 ; A. B. IsHAM, Prisoners of War and Military Prisons ; J. V. 
Hadley, Seven Months a Prisoner. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE ERA OF RECONSTRUCTION 

How THE North used its Victory -^ 

A few hours after Lincoln's death, Andrew Johnson of Ten- 676. Andrew 
nessee took the oath of office as President of the United States /d^nt °Apr?r 
(April 15, 1865). Mr. Johnson had been given the second ^s, 1865 
place on the Republican ticket in 1864 not by reason of any 
fitness to occupy high office, but partly to reward him for his 
fidelity to the Union cause in the seceding state of Tennessee 
(p. 446, note i), and partly to save the Republican party from 
the reproach of being called " sectional " in again choosing both 
its candidates from Northern states, as it had done in 1856 and 
i860. But the selection of Johnson was most unfortunate. He 
was coarse, violent, egotistical, obstinate, and vindictive. Of 
Lincoln's splendid array of statesmanlike virtues he possessed 
only two, honesty and patriotism. Tact, wisdom, magnanimity, 
deference to the opinion of others, patience, kindness, humor — 
all these qualities he lacked ; and he lacked them at a crisis in 
our history when they were sorely needed. 

Armed resistance in the South was at an end. But the great 677. The 
question remained of how the North should use its victory, feconstruc- 
Except for a momentary wave of desire to avenge Lincoln's *^°^ 
murder by the execution of prominent " rebels," there was no 
thought of inflicting on the Southern leaders the extreme punish- 
ment of traitors ; ^ but there was the difficult problem of restor- 
ing the states of the secession to their proper place in the Union. 

1 The single exception to this policy of mercy was the treatment of Jefferson 
Davis. The Confederate president was brought from his prison at Fortress Monroe 
to the federal court at Richmond to answer the charge of treason. But he was 
released on bail, and the case was never pressed. 

477 



4/8 TJic Crisis of DisiDiion 

What was their condition ? Were they still states of the Union, 
in spite of their four years' struggle to break away from it ? Or 
had they lost the rights of states, and become territories of the 
United States, subject to such governments as might be pro- 
vided for them by the authorities at Washington ? Or was the 
South merely a " conquered province," which had forfeited by 
its rebellion e\-en the right of protection by the national govern- 
ment, and which might be made to submit to such terms as 
the conquering North saw fit to impose ? 
678. Lin- Long before the close of the war President Lincoln had 

cent pian^^^ answered these questions according to the theory he had held 
consistently from the day of the assault on Fort Sumter, 
namely, that not the states themselves, but cbmbinations of 
individuals in the states, too powerful to be dealt with by the 
ordinary process of the courts, had resisted the authority of the 
United States. He had therefore welcomed and nursed every 
manifestation of loyalty in the Southern states. He had recog- 
nized the representatives of the small l-nionist population of 
Virginia, assembled at Alexandria within the Federal lines, as 
the true government of the state. He had immediately estab- 
lished a militaiT government in Tennessee on the success of the 
Union arms there in the spring of 1863. He had declared by 
a proclamation in December, 1S63, that as soon as 10 percent 
of the voters of i860 in any of the seceded states should form 
a loyal government and accept the legislation of Congress on 
the subject of slavery, he would recognize that government as 
legal. And such governments had actually been set up in 
Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. True, Lincoln had not 
come to an agreement with Congress as to the final method of 
restoring the Southern states to their place in the Union.^ That 

1 Congress did not receive any senators or representatives from these " Lin- 
coln governments," and in 1S64 passed the Wade-Davis bill prescribing condi- 
tions on which the seceding states should be readmitted to the Union. Lincoln, 
unwilling to have so weighty a question decided hastily, allowed the Congress 
of 1864 to expire without giving the bill his signature. Wade and Davis pro- 
tested against this " usurpation of authority " by the executive ; and there is no 
doubt that, if Lincoln had been spared to serve his second term, he would have 



The Era of Reconstritction 479 

question waited till the close of the war ; and the awful pity 
is that when it came Abraham Lincoln was no longer alive.^ 

During the summer and autumn of 1865, when Congress 679. The 
was not in session, President Johnson proceeded to apply gJvem-*^° 
Lincoln's plan to the states of the South, just as if it had been ments/'ises 
definitely settled that Congress was to have no part in their 
reconstruction. He appointed military governors in North and 
South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and 
Texas. He ordered conventions to be held in those states, 
which repealed the ordinances of secession and framed new 
constitutions. State officers were elected. Legislatures were 
chosen, which repudiated the debts incurred during the war 
(except in South Carolina) and ratified the Thirteenth Amend- 
ment abolishing slavery (except in Mississippi). When Congress 
met in December, 1865, senators and representatives from the 
Southern states, which but a few months before had been in 
rebellion against the authority of the United States, were wait- 
ing at the doors of the Capitol for admission to their seats.^ 

But Congress had good reasons for not permitting these 
men forthwith to participate in making laws for the Union, 
which they had so lately fought to destroy. In the first place, 
the President had arrogated to himself, during the recess of 
Congress, the sole right to determine on what terms the seceded 
states should be restored to the Union. The President had 

had to use all his tact and patience in finding a fair ground of agreement 
between the President and Congress in the reconstruction of the Southern 
states. 

1 On April ii, three days before his assassination, Lincoln was called to 
the balcony of the White House to make a speech in response to the congratu- 
lations of the citizens of Washington on the surrender of Lee's army (April 9). 
In this last public utterance Lincoln said, "I am considering a new announce- 
ment to the people of the South." No record of this intended announcement was 
found among Lincoln's papers, but we may be sure that it would have been an 
appeal to the defeated states of the secession to come back into the Union on 
liberal terms and without rancor. 

2 The Johnson government in Texas did not get organized until 1866, and 
the Florida legislature had not met to choose the senators from that state. But 
with the exception of Texas and Florida all the states of the secession sent up 
their regular quota of representatives and senators. 



ments 



480 The Crisis of Disunioji 

the power of pardon, which he could extend to individuals as 
widely as he pleased. But the pardoning power did not give 
him the right to determine the political condition of the states 
which had made war against the Union. 
680. Legis- Furthermore, the conduct of the Johnson governments in the 
these govern- autumn of 1S65 was offensive to the North. Although they 
accepted the Thirteenth Amendment, they passed veiy harsh 
laws against the negroes, which in some cases came very near 
reducing them to the condition of slaveiy again. For example, 
" vagrancy " laws imposed a line on negroes who were wander- 
ing about without a domicile, and allowed the man who paid 
the fine to take the negro and compel him to work out his debt. 
" Apprentice " laws assigned young negroes to " guardians " 
(often their former owners), for whom they should work with- 
out wages in return for their board and clothing. To the 
Southerners these laws seemed to be only the necessar}- pro- 
tection of the white population against the deeds of crime and vio- 
lence to which a large, wandering, unemployed body of negroes 
might be tempted. Nearly 4,000,000 slaves had been suddenly 
liberated. A^ery few of them had any sense of responsibility or 
any capacit)' or capital for beginning a life of industrial freedom. 
Their emotional nature led them to believe that miraculous pros- 
perity was to be bestowed upon them without their effort ; 
that the plantations of their late masters were to be divided up 
among them as Christmas and New Year's gifts, and that 
'' ever)^ nigger was to have forty acres and a mule.'' They 
were unfortunately encouraged in these ideas by many low- 
minded adventurers and rascally, broken-down politicians, who 
came from the North and posed as the guides and protectors 
of the colored race,^ poisoning the minds of the negroes against 

1 These men were called " carpetbaggers." because they were popularly said 
to have brought all their property with them in the cheap kind of valise which 
in those davs was made of carpet material ; and the Southerners who acted with 
them in their attempt to raise the negro above his former master in societ)- and 
politics were called " scalawags." The carpetbaggers and scalawags were of 
course working for their own profit and political advancement. They must not 



The Era of Reconstruction 48 1 

the only people who could really help them begin their new life 
of freedom well, — their old masters. 

The people of the North, who had little or no realization of 681. Northern 
the tremendous social problem which the liberation of 4,000,- " w'ack ° 
000 negro slaves brought upon the South, regarded the " black ^°^®^ " 
codes " of the Johnson governments of 1865, which forbade the 
negroes such freedom of speech, employment, assembly, and 
migration as they themselves had, as a proof of the defiant pur- 
pose of the South to thrust the negro back into his old position 
of slavery. Therefore the North determined that the Southern 
states should not be restored to their place in the Union until 
they gave better proof of an honest purpose to carry out the 
Thirteenth Amendment. The war for the abolition of the curse 
which had divided the Union had been too costly in men and 
money to allow its results to be jeopardized by the legisla- 
tion of the Southern states. 

A further offense in the eyes of the North was the sort of 682. The 
men whom the Southern states sent up to Washington in the its^eade^s 
winter of 1865 to take their places in Congress. They were pg^g^fer^^' 
mostly prominent secessionists. Some had served as members 1865 
of the Confederate Congress at Richmond ; some as brigadier 
generals in the Confederate army. Alexander H. Stephens, vice 
president of the Confederacy, was sent by the legislature of 
Georgia to serve in the United States Senate. To the Southern- 
ers it seemed perfectly natural to send their best talent to 
Congress, They would have searched in vain to find statesmen 
who had not been active in the Confederate cause. But to the 
North the appearance of these men in Washington seemed a 
piece of defiance and bravado on the part of the South ; a boast 

be confused with the many good men and women who went South to work solely 
for the education, protection, and uplift of the negro. Before the close of the 
war Congress had established a Freedman's Bureau in the War Department 
(February 3, 1865), whose duty it was to look after the interests of the emanci- 
pated blacks, securing them labor contracts, settling their disputes, aiding them 
to build cottages, etc. The carpetbaggers tempted the negroes away from 
industrial pursuits into politics. 



482 TJu Crisis of Disunion 

» 
that they had nothing to repent of, and that they had forfeited 

no privilege of leadership. It was rather too severe a strain 
on human chants^ to welcome Alexander H. Stephens to a seat 
beside Charles Sumner in tlie Senate of the United States.^ 
683. They Then, finally, tliere was a political reason why tlie Republi- 

.admis^ion <^^^'i CongTCSS which assembled in December, 1S65, should not 
admit the men sent to it by the Johnson governments in the 
South. These men were almost all Democrats, and as hostile 
to the " Black Republican " paity as tliey had been in 1S56 and 
1S60. Combined with the Democrats and " copperheads " of 
the Xortii, who had opposed the war, they might prove numer- 
ous enough to oust the Republicans from power. The part}- 
which had saved tlie countr)' must rule it, said the Republican 
orators. 
6S4. consrre^s Moved by tliese reasons. Congress, instead of admitting the 
work of re- Southem members, appointed a committee of fifteen to investi- 

construction ^ ^^ Condition of tlie late seceded states and recommend on 
into Its owTi 1=^ 

hands, Jan- what terms thev should be restored to their full prixilesres in the 

uary, i866 - 

Union. Naturally, Johnson was offended that Congress should 
ignore or undo his work ; and he immediately assumed a tone 
of hostilit}' to the leaders of Congress. He had the coarseness, 
when making a speech from the balcony of the White House 
on Washington's birthday. 1S66. to attack Sumner, Phillips, and 
Stevens" by name, accusing them of seeking to destroy the 
rights- of the Southem states and to rob the President of his 
legal powers under the Constitution, and even to encourage 
his assassination. When Congress, in the early months of 1S66, 

1 Of course there is no instance in the history of the world of a conquered 
pteople being allowed immediately to participate, on equal terms with their 
conquerors, in making laws. A committee of Congress appointed to consider the 
condition of the states ~ lately in rebellion " reported (June, iS66) that it would 
be ^^ folly and madness " to admit the representatives of these states forthwith to 
Congress. 

^ Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania (not to be confused with Stephens of 
GeorgiaV was Uie chairman of the Committee on Appropriations in Congress, 
a bitter enemy of the South, and leader of the " radical " Republicans, who were 
determined to punish the " rebels " severely. Stevens ruled Congress as no 
odier politician in our histon* had done. 



The Era of Reconstruction 483 

passed bills ^ to protect the negroes against the hostile legisla- 
tion of the Southern states, Johnson vetoed the bills. But Con- 
gress was strong enough to pass them over his veto. The 
battle was then fairly joined between the President and Con- 
gress, and it boded ill for the prospects of peace and order in 
the South. 

On April ^o, 1866, the committee of fifteen reported. It ess. The 
recommended a new amendment to the Constitution (the four- Amendment 
teenth) which should guarantee the civil rights^ of the negro fgb"^'^""^' 
citizen of the South, reduce the representation in Congress of 
any state which refused to let the negro vote, and disqualify the 
leaders of the Confederacy from holding federal or state office.^ 
This last provision, which deprived the Southern leaders of their 
political rights, was harsh and unkind, assuming as it did that 
these men were not reconciled to the Union. But the rest of 
the Fourteenth Amendment was a fair basis for the reconstruc- 
tion of the Southern states. Congress passed the amendment 
June 13, 1866, and Secretary Seward sent it to the states for 
ratification. While Congress did not explicitly promise that it 
would admit the representatives and senators of the states 
which ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, it doubtless would 
have done so. For when Tennessee ratified in July, 1866, that 
state was promptly restored to its full privileges in the Union. 
The other states of the secession might well have followed the 
lead of Tennessee ; but every one of them, indignant at the 
disqualifying clause, overwhelmingly rejected the amendment. 
It thus failed to secure the votes of three fourths of the states 
of the Union, necessary for its ratification. 

1 To wit, the Freedman's Bureau Bill, continuing and enlarging the power of 
that bureau of the War Department (p. 480, note), and the Civil Rights Bill, pro- 
tecting the negro in his life, property, and freedom of movement and occupation. 

2 Civil rights (see note i) are distinguished from political rights. The former 
are the rights that every citizen (civis) has ; the latter are the privileges of voting 
and holding office. Women and children, for example, have full civil rights, i.e. the 
protection of the government ; but (with few exceptions) they have no political 
rights, i.e. of taking part in the goverttment. 

3 The Fourteenth Amendment must be carefully studied and mastered. Jt is 
printed in full in Appendix II. The disqualifying clause is Section 3. 



March 2, 
1867 



484 The Crisis of Disunion 

686. The Congress, angered by this conduct on the part of the South, 
election of decided to take the reconstruction of the states of the secession 
^^^ entirely into its own hands. The elections of 1866, which had 

taken place while the Fourteenth Amendment was before the 
people, had resulted in an overwhelming victory for the con- 
gressional party of Stevens and Sumner -over the President's 
supporters. Johnson himself had contributed to the defeat of 
his policies by encouraging the Southern states to reject the 
Fourteenth Amendment, and by making a series of outrageous 
speeches in the West during the autumn of 1866, vilifying 
the congressional leaders and exalting his own patriotism and 
sagacity. 

687. The Early in 1867, then, Congress, under the leadership of Ste- 
tion Act, vens of Pennsylvania in the House and of Sumner and Wilson 

of Massachusetts in the Senate, devised a thoroughgoing plan 
for reconstructing the South. By the Reconstruction Act of 
March 2, 1867, the whole area occupied by the ten states which 
had rejected the Fourteenth Amendment was divided up into 
five military districts, and a major general of the Union army 
was put in command of each district. The Johnson governments 
of 1865 were swept away, and in their place new governments 
were established under the supervision of the major generals and 
their detachments of United States troops.^ The Reconstruc- 
tion Act provided that negroes should be allowed to participate 
both in framing the new constitutions and in running the new 
governments, while at the same time their former masters were 
in large numbers disqualified by the third section of the 
Fourteenth Amendment. The act further provided that, when 
the new state governments should have ratified the Fourteenth 
Amendment, and that amendment should have become part of 
the Constitution of the United States, these states should be 
restored to their place in the Union. 

lln October, 1867, there were 19,320 United States soldiers distributed at 134 
posts in the South. At Richmond and New Orleans there were over 1000 
troops; at other posts less than 500. They had charge of the registering of 
voters and supervised the polling. 



The Era of Reco7istriictio7i 



485 



Thus by the Reconstruction Acts^ of 1867 Congress de- 688. Negro 
liberately forced negro suffrage on the South at the point of forced^on the 
the bayonet. It was a violent measure for Congress to adopt, ^^^^^ 
even though the conduct of the states of the secession in reject- 
ing the Fourteenth Amendment was sorely provoking. The 
negroes outnumbered the whites in the states of South Caro- 
lina, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. They were, 
with few exceptions, utterly unfit for the exercise of political 



West Virginia made out of 
the 48 loyal counties of Virginia • V' 
admitted to the Union as a state. ' 




The Military Districts of the Reconstruction Act of 1867 

rights. Even the colored men of the North, far in advance of 
their Southern brothers who labored in the cotton fields, were 
allowed the suffrage in only six states, where they counted as 
the tiniest fraction of the population. Ohio, in the very year 
Congress was forcing negro suffrage on the South (1867), 
rejected by over 50,000 votes the proposition to give the ballot 
to the few negroes of that state. Conceding that Congress had 
the right to impose negro suffrage on the South as a conqueror's 

1 Two acts supplementary to the one of March 2 prescribed the method for 
conducting elections in the South (March 23), and made the military authorities 
in control of the districts of the South responsible to the general of the army 
(Grant) and not to the President (July 19). 



486 The Crisis of Distmioii 

privilege, it was nevertheless a most unwise thing to do. To 
reverse the relative position of the races in the South, to '^ stand 
the social pyramid on its apex," to set the ignorant, supersti- 
tious, gullible slave in power over his former master, was no 
way to insure either the protection of the negro's right or the 
stability and peace of the Southern governments.-^ 
689. Char- The governments of North and South Carolina, Georgia, 
Reomstruc- Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, 

tion govern- fonned under the military domination of the Reconstruction 

ments, 1868- -' 

1874 Acts, were sorry affairs. The negroes, who did not ask for 

political rights, were suddenly thrust into positions of high 
political office which they had no idea how to fill. Prompted by 
their unscrupulous carpetbagger friends and scalawag backers 
they could be counted on to vote the Republican ticket, and to 
send to Congress men of the party which had saved the 
country. That was enough for most of the advocates of Re- 
construction. But for the exhausted Southern states, already 
amply " punished " by the desolation of war, the rule of these 
negro governments of 1868 was an indescribable orgy of ex- 
travagance, fraud, and disgusting incompetence, — a travesty 
on government. Instead of wise, conservative legislatures, 
which would encourage industry, keep down expenditures, and 
build up the shattered resources of the South, there were 
ignorant groups of men in the state capitals, dominated by 
unprincipled politicians, who plunged the states further and 
further into debt by voting themselves enormous salaries, 
and by spending lavish sums of money on railroads, canals, and 
public buildings and works, for which they reaped hundreds of 
thousands of dollars in " graft." ^ 

1 Lincoln had suggested to the miHtary governor of Louisiana during the war 
that the most capable negroes and those who had shown their devotion to the 
Union by fighting in the Federal armies might be given the right to vote. But he 
had no idea of forcittg the South to give a single former slave political rights. 
Johnson also had earnestly advised the Mississippi convention of 1865 to give 
a vote to negroes who possessed ^250 worth of property. 

2 The economic evils and social humiliation brought on the South by the 
Reconstruction governments are almost beyond description. South Carolina, for 



The Era of ReconstriLction 



487 



Such governments could not of course last, unless supported 690. TheKu- 
by Northern bayonets ; and the Republican carpetbag politi- 
cians in the South were not slow to call upon the Republican 
administration at Washington for detachments of troops when- 
ever their supremacy was threatened. Deprived by force of any 
legal means of defense against this iniquitous kind of govern- 
ment, the South resorted to intimidation and persecution of the 
negro. Secret organizations, called the Ku-Klux Klans, made 
up mostly of young men, 
took advantage of the 
black man's supersti- 
tious nature to force him 
back into the humble 
social position which he 
held before the war. 
The members of the Ku- 
Klux on horseback, with 
man and horse robed 
in ghostly white sheets, 
spread terror at night 

through the negro quarters, and posted on trees and fences 
horrible warnings to the carpetbaggers and scalawags to leave 
the country soon if they wished to live. 

Inevitably there was violence done in this reign of terror 
inaugurated by the Ku-Klux riders. Negroes were beaten; 
scalawags were shot. Of course these deeds of violence were 
greatly exaggerated by the carpetbag officials, who reported 
them to Washington and asked more troops for their protec- 
tion. It came to actual fighting in the streets of New Orleans, 

example, had a legislature in which 88 of the 155 members were negroes. Ninety 
of the members paid no taxes ; yet this legislature spent the people's money by 
millions. The debt of the state was ^5,000,000 in 1868; by 1S72 it had been 
increased to $30,000,000 ; in one year $200,000 were spent in furnishing the 
state capitol with costly plate-glass mirrors, lounges, desks, armchairs, and other 
luxurious appointments, including a free bar, for the use of the negro and 
scalawag legislators. It took the Southern states from two to nine years to get 
rid of these governments. 




T.'h. »bo.. cot ,ep«.™u the We 



teprCTonts the tite in store for those great pests of Southern soclet/— 
r tnd scalawag— if tmaA Ul Dilie's lud after the break of da; OB tk* 

A Ku-Klux Warning 



tion 



488 The Crisis of Disunion 

and the trenches outside Vicksburg, which were used in 1863 
by the Union sharpshooters, were the scene, ten years later, of 
a disgraceful race conflict between blacks and whites. Thus 
long after the war was over, the prostrate South, which should 
have been well on the way to industrial and commercial 
recovery, under the leadership of its own best genius, still pre- 
sented in many parts a spectacle of anarchy, violence, and fraud, 
— its legislatures and offices in the grasp of low political adven- 
turers, its resources squandered or stolen, its people divided 
into two bitterly hostile races. 
691. The Why did the Republican Congress of 1867 put upon the 

Reconstruc- South the unbearable burden of negro rule supported by the 
bayonet ? For various reasons. Some misguided humanitarians, 
like Sumner, let their sympathy for the oppressed slave con- 
fuse their judgment of the negro's intellectual capacity.^ Others, 
desiring justice above all things, believed that the only way to 
secure the negro in his civil rights was to put the ballot into 
his hands. The partisan politicians welcomed negro suffrage as 
a means of assuring Republican majorities in the Southern 
states.* And finally, there were thousands of men in the North 
who wished to punish the South for the defiant attitude of the 
Johnson governments in passing the " black codes," in sending 
Confederate brigadier generals up to Congress, and in rejecting 
the Fourteenth Amendment. The conduct of these state govern- 
ments was exasperating, to be sure ; but Congress might have 
simply kept a firm military hand upon them and waited patiently 
for them to come to their better senses and comply with the terms 

1 General Pope, for example, who was in command of the third military dis- 
trict under the Reconstruction Act (comprising Georgia, Florida, and Alabama), 
wrote to General Grant in July, 1867, " Five years will have transferred the 
intellect and education, so far as the masses are concerned, to the colored 
people of this district." 

2 In the presidential election of 1868, for example, six of the eight states 
of the secession which took part in the election voted for the Republican candi- 
date, General Grant ! Such a result could have been accomplished only by the 
enfranchisement of the negroes and the disfranchisement of the whites. Virginia, 
Mississippi, and Texas did not comply with the terms of Congress and gain 
restoration to their places in the Union until 1870. 



The Era of Reconstrtiction 489 

offered in the Fourteenth Amendment for their restitution to their 
political privileges. By hastening to reconstruct them on the 
basis of negro suffrage, Congress did them an unpardonable 
injury. The South would never have cherished resentment 
against the North for the defeat of 1861-1865 on the fair field 
of battle ; but the half century that has passed since the fall 
of Fort Sumter has hardly seen the extinction of the bitter 
passion roused in the hearts of the men, women, and children 
of the South against their fellow countrymen of the North, for 
the '' crime of Reconstruction." 

The Recovery of the Nation 

Although the restitution of the Southern states to their place 692. Effect of 
in the Union was the most pressing business of Congress in the nation 
years immediately following the Civil War, it was by no means 
the only problem in the reconstruction of the nation. War is a 
dreadful thing, especially a long and severe civil war. It not only 
destroys life and property, desolating the region over which it 
sweeps, but it dislocates the government, demoralizes standards 
of business, disturbs relations with foreign countries, and piles up 
an enormous debt to be paid from the taxation of the people. 

Abraham Lincoln had exercised a greater power than any 693. Disturb- 
other President in our history. As commander in chief of the relations of 
army and navy he had had the appointment of officers and J^ con^^ress"^ 
the general direction of campaigns. Through his Secretaries 
of War and of the Treasury he had superintended the raising of 
men and money for the prosecution of the war. As measures 
of safety and military policy he had suspended the clauses of 
the Constitution (Amendments V and VI) which guard citizens 
of the United States against arbitrary arrest and punishment 
without a jury trial, and had emancipated all the slaves of men 
in rebellion against the authority of the United States. Con- 
gress had generously ratified his acts, but toward the close of 
the war it had begun to reassert its power, as was shown by 



490 TJie Ci'isis of Disunion 

its resistance to Lincoln in the Wade-Davis bill (p. 478, note). 
Under his successor, Johnson, the pendulum swung to the other 
extreme, and Congress developed quite as absolute a control 
over the government as the President had exercised during the 
war. Congress not only overrode Johnson's vetoes with mock- 
ing haste, but it passed acts depriving him of his constitutional 
powers as commander of the army, and forbidding him to dis- 
miss a member of his cabinet. Finally, it impeached him on the 
charge of high crimes and misdemeanors.^ 

694. The On the same day with the Reconstruction Act (March 2, 
officVAct, 1867), Congress passed a law called the Tenure of Office Act, 
March 2,1867 ^hi^h forbade the President to remove officers of the govern- 
ment without the consent of the Senate, and made the tenure 
of cabinet officers extend through the presidential term for 
which they were appointed. This was an invasion of the privi- 
lege which the President had always enjoyed of removing his 
cabinet officers at will. The purpose of the act was to keep 
Stanton, who was in thorough sympathy with the radical leaders 
of Congress, at the head of the Department of War. 

695. Theim- President Johnson violated the Tenure of Office Act, which 
and trial of he believed to be unconstitutional, and removed Stanton. The 
Johnson, 1868 House impeached him, February 24, 1868, and the Senate as- 
sembled the next month under the presidency of Chief Justice 
Chase to try the case (Constitution, Article I, sect. 3, clause 6). 
To the chagrin of the radical Republicans the Senate failed by 
one vote of the two-thirds majority necessary to convict the 
President, seven Republicans voting with the Democrats for 

1 The President of the United States is elected for four years, and the only 
way he can be removed is by impeachment proceedings (Constitution, Article II, 
sect. 4 ; Article I, sect. 2, clause 5 ; Article I, sect. 3, clause 6). In many European 
countries the executive power is virtually in the hands of a committee of the 
legislature, or a " ministry," which can be overthrown at any time by an adverse 
vote of the legislature. This is called " responsible government," and in coun- 
tries where it exists (England, France, Italy, Spain, for example), a prolonged 
quarrel between the executive and the legislative branches of government, like 
that between Jackson and Congress (p. 286) or between Johnson and Congress 
(p. 4S2), is impossible. 



dent Grant 



TJie Era of Reconstncctioii 49 1 

his acquittal (May 16, 1868).^ Johnson finished out his term, 
openly despised and flouted by the Republican leaders, and was 
succeeded on March 4, 1869, by General U. S. Grant. 

As a soldier Grant had been superb ; as a statesman he was 696. presi- 
pitiable. He knew nothing about the administration of a 
political office. He had simply been rewarded for his services 
in the war by the presidency of the United States, as a hero 
might be rewarded by a gold medal or a gift of money. He 
was so simple, direct, and innocent himself that he failed to 
understand the duplicity and fraud that were practiced under 
his very nose. Like all untrained men in public positions, he 
made his personal likes and dislikes the test of his political 
judgments,^ and it was only necessary to win his friendship to 
have his official support through thick and thin. Unfortunately 
his early struggle with poverty and his own failure in business 
had led him to set too high a valuation on mere pecuniary 
success, making him unduly susceptible to the influence of men 
who had made millions.* He was easily managed by the astute 
Republican politicians in Congress, who could, by their plausible 
arguments, make the worse cause appear to him to be the better.* 

1 The condemnation of President Johnson would have been a gross injustice. 
The Tenure of Office Act was passed only to set a trap for him. His veto of 
acts of Congress in 1866-1867 had been entirely within his rights by the Con- 
stitution, and his abuse of the congressional leaders in public speeches, while a 
personal insult, could not be called a political crime. In a desperate attempt, 
therefore, to find grounds (" high crimes or misdemeanors ") on which they 
could impeach the President, the radical congressmen passed a most unfair law 
which they were pretty sure Johnson would violate. 

2 Like our other military President, Andrew Jackson. But Jackson had far 
more administrative ability and political wisdom than Grant. 

3 For example. Grant selected two men for places in his first cabinet whose 
only possible recommendation was their wealth. He himself unwisely accepted 
presents and social attentions from men whose money was made dishonestly 
and, sometimes, even at the expense of the government. His unsuspecting 
nature made him the victim of clever political and financial rascals. 

4 The contemporary criticism of Grant by men of the highest political wisdom 
was one of pity rather than censure. George William Curtis wrote to a friend 
in 1870, '■' I think the warmest friends of Grant feel that he has failed terribly 
as a President, but not from want of honesty." James Russell Towell wrote, " I 
liked Grant, and was struck by the pathos of his face ; a puzzled pathos as of a 
man with a problem before him of which he does not understand the terms." 



492 The Crisis of Disunion 

In his treatment of the South, for example, Grant was 
changed by his radical Republican associates, like Benjamin 
F. Butler, from a generous conqueror into a narrow, partisan 
dictator. " He dwindled from the leader of the people," says 
Dunning, " to the figurehead of a party." At Appomattox he 
had been noble. In a visit to the Southern states, a few months 
after the close of the war, he had become convinced, as he 
wrote, that " the mass of thinking men at the South accepted in 
good faith " the outcome of the struggle. Yet as President he 
upheld the disgraceful negro governments of the Reconstruc- 
tion Act, and constantly furnished troops to keep the carpetbag 
and scalawag officials in power in the South, in order to provide 
Republican votes for congressmen and presidential electors.^ 
697. Low Probably the tone of public morality was never so low in all 

morality ^n ^'^ our country's history, before or since, as it was in the years of 

Grant's ad- Grant's administration (1860-1877), althouo^h a more honest 
ministration, ^ ■' ' ' ^^ ^ 

1869-1877 President never sat in the White House. The unsettled con- 

dition of the country during the Civil War and the era of 
Reconstruction furnished a great opportunity for dishonesty. 
Large contracts for supplies of food, clothing, ammunition, and 
equipment had to be filled on short notice. Men grew rich on 
fraudulent deeds. Our state legislatures and municipal govern- 
ments fell into the hands of corrupt " rings." The notorious 
" Boss " Tweed robbed the city of New York of millions of 
dollars before he closed his career in the Ludlow Street jail in 
1878. Corruption reached the highest offices of state. Secre- 
tary of War Belknap resigned in order to escape impeachment 
for sharing the graft from the dishonest management of army 
posts in the West. The President's private secretary, Babcock, 
was implicated in frauds which robbed the government of its 

1 Congress, by the "Force Bill" of February, 1871, established federal 
supervision over elections for the House of Representatives. From 1870 to 
1S78 the United States spent from ^60,000 to ^100,000 on each congressional 
election. In the presidential contest of 1876, which cost the government 
^275,000, the polling places in the Southern states were supervised by 7000 
deputy marshals of the United States. 



The Era of Recofzstritction 493 

revenue tax on whisky. Western stagecoach lines, in league with 
corrupt post-office officials, made false returns of the amount of 
business done along their routes, and secured large appropria- 
tions from Congress for carrying the mails. Some of these " pet 
routes," or " star routes," cost the government thousands of 
dollars annually and carried less than a dozen letters a week. 
Members of Congress so far lost their sense of official propriety 
as to accept large amounts of railroad stock as '' a present " 
from men who wanted legislative favors for their roads. 

Before Grant's first term was over, a reform movement was 698. The re^ 
started in the Republican party to protest against corruption in ment,™i87ol 
national, state, and municipal government. The chief policies ^^^2 
advocated by the new party were, first, civil service reform, 
by which appointments to office should be made on the basis 
of the merit and not of the political '' pull " of the candidates ; 
second, tariff reform, by which the highly protective war duties, 
which were enriching a few manufacturers at the cost of the 
mass of the people, should be reduced ; third, the complete 
cessation of Federal military intervention to support the carpet- 
bag governments of the South. 

Had the reform party shown the same wisdom in the choice 699. Defeat 
of a candidate and the management of their campaign as they Repubiicanr 
did in the making of their platform, they might have defeated ^^^^ 
Grant in 1872 and put an end to the corrupt and bigoted par- 
tisan government which he was powerless to control. But 
dissensions in their own camp (always the curse of reform 
movements in politics) prevented the delegates to the new 
party's convention in Cincinnati, May, 1872, from nominating 
their strongest candidate, Charles Francis Adams of Massa- 
chusetts.^ They finally united on Horace Greeley, editor of the 

1 Adams was our admirable minister to England during the Civil War. Both 
his father (John Quincy Adams) and his grandfather (John Adams) had been 
Presidents of the United States. The leader of the reform movement was Carl 
Schurz, a German refugee who had come to this country during the troublous 
days following the revolutions of 1848 in western Europe. He attained the rank 
of major general in our Civil War, and was Secretary of the Interior in President 
Hayes's cabinet. His foreign birth disqualified him for the presidency. 



494 



The Crisis of Disunion 



700. Im- 
proved politi- 
cal conditions 
in Grant's 
second term 



45. 



b 



New York Tribune, a vehement, irritable man, who had no 
qualifications for the high office of President, and whose only 
real point of agreement with the reformers was a desire to see 
the Southern states delivered from the radical Reconstruction 
governments. The Democrats accepted Greeley, but his defeat 
was overwhelming. He carried 
only six states, with 66 electoral 
votes, while thirty-one states, 
with 2 86 votes, went for Grant.^ 
The second administration of 
Grant (i 8 73-1 87 7) saw the 
gradual recovery of the nation 
from the' political and commer- 
cial corruption of the years im- 
mediately following the war. A 
severe financial panic which 
broke in 1S73 sobered the busi- 
ness men of the country and 
checked the wild speculation in 
lands and railroads which had characterized the five-year period 
immediately preceding.^ By 1874 the states of Virginia, North 
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas, which were 
all either under military government or cursed by the carpet- 
bag negro governments of Reconstruction at the beginning of 
Grant's term of office, had resrained " home rule " under their 




Horace Greeley 



1 Greeley died, overwhelmed with domestic sorrow and political disappoint- 
ment, three weeks after the election. The unfortunate end of his career must 
not blind us to his great ser\-ices before the war in the antislaver}- cause. 

2 During the years 1S65-1S6S about Sooo miles of railroad were laid down; 
during the vears 1S6Q-1S73 nearly 24.000 miles were built. Business was humming 
in 1S72. Credit was widely extended, and we were importing about 575,000,000 
worth more of goods annually than we were exporting. The panic was started 
with the failure of the great banking house of Jay Cooke, which had rendered 
the government inestimable senices in floating its loans during the war. Finan- 
cial panics are ver\' difficult things to explain. They seem to occur about every 
twenty years (1S19, 1S37, 1S57, 1S73, 1^93? 1907)- An ingenious theory is that 
each generation of business men needs to go through a panic to leam to exchange 
the youthful idea of getting rich in a hurr\- for the more sobered and matured 
view of a conservative and steady progress in material wealth. 



The Era of Reconstruction 495 

native white leaders, and were of course solidly Democratic. 
The Republicans had lost all chance of building up an endur- 
ing party in the states of the secession by forcing the rule of 
the negro on the South. The congressional election of 1874 
was a landslide. The Democrats, for the first time since 
Buchanan's election in 1856, got a majority of the House of 
Representatives. The election meant that the country was 
turning to other duties more important than keeping fresh the 
memory of the " crime of rebellion." Questions of the cur- 
rency, of transportation, of the tariff, of immigration, of civil 
service reform, of monopolies, of capital and labor, were coming 
to the fore. In 1872 a national labor party was in the field 
with demands for an eight-hour working day and free public 
education at the nation's expense. In 1876 the farmers of the 
West were demanding national regulation of the railroads, and 
money issued directly by the government instead of a currency 
based on the Eastern bankers' gold and silver. 

In the national convention of 1876 the Republicans rejected 701. The 
the brilliant but somewhat discredited Speaker of the House, campaign ^° 
James G. Blaine of Maine,^ and nominated a man of sterling ^^^6 
honesty and conciliatory views on the Southern question. Gen- 
eral Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio. The Democrats 
nominated Governor Samuel J. Tilden of New York, who had 
won a national reputation for his good work in the exposure of 
the rascality of the Tweed Ring. The result of the Hayes- 
Tilden campaign was of little importance, for the choice of either 
man meant the inauguration of a new era in our politics, — the 
end of the carpetbag rule in the South, and of the tyranny of 
the radical Republican Congress, which disgraced the country 
during the administrations of Johnson and Grant. But the 

1 Blaine was one of the most brilliant men in the historj' of American politics. 
In his personal charm, his splendid orator)-, his keenness in debate, his hold on 
the affections of his followers, he resembled his great predecessor in the chair 
of the House, Henry Clay. But Blaine was far inferior to Clay in moral stature. 
He was involved in dealings with Western railroads which even his highly dramatic 
speech of self-defense in the House could not make seem regular and honest to 
his countrymen. We shall meet his name later in these pages. 



49^ The Crisis of Disunion 

election itself was the most exciting in our history. Late in the 
evening of election day (November 7) it was almost certain that 
Tilden had carried enough states to give him 184 electoral votes. 
Only 185 votes were necessary for a choice. A double set of 
returns came from the four states of South Carolina, Florida, 
Louisiana, and Oregon.-^ A single vote from any of these states, 
therefore, would give Tilden the election. The Hayes managers 
claimed all the disputed votes ; but there was no provision made 
in the Constitution or in any law of Congress to decide which 
set of returns was legal. The Constitution says in regard to the 
electoral vote merely that " the president of the Senate shall, 
in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, 
open all the certificates, and the votes shall then be counted " 
(Amendment XH). Counted by whom ? If by the president of 
the Senate (a Republican), Hayes would be declared elected; 
if by the joint action of the Houses, the Democratic majority 
would seat Tilden in the presidential chair. 
702. The Excitement ran high as the winter of 187 6- 1877 passed, and 

Comm[ssion, the possibility presented itself of the country's being without a 
1877 President on March 4, 1877. As a compromise an Electoral 

Commission of fifteen members was created by act of Congress, 
to consist of five senators (3 Republicans, 2 Democrats), five con- 
gressmen (3 Democrats, 2 Republicans), and five justices of the 
Supreme Court (2 Republicans, 2 Democrats, and one to be 
elected by these four). The fifteenth member, Justice Bradley, 
voted with the Republicans on every question. By a vote of 8 to 
7 the Republican certificates were accepted from all the states in 
dispute, and Hayes was declared President by an electoral vote 
of 185 to 1 8 4. The decision was reached on the eve of inaugura- 
tion day, and the new President took the oath of office in perfect 

1 The double set of returns from the three Southern states was due to the fact 
that the carpetbag governments which were still in control there rejected the 
votes of some districts on the ground that there had been fraud and intimidation 
at the polls. In Oregon one of the Republican electors chosen was disqualified by 
the fact that he held a federal oflfice in the state, and the Democrats insisted that 
the man with the next highest vote on the list (a Democrat) should replace him. 



I 



The Ef-a of Reconstruction 497 

security and tranquillity. That the inauguration of a man whom 
more than half the country believed to have been fairly defeated 
on election day could take place without a sign of civil com- 
motion is perhaps the most striking proof in our history of the 
moderate and law-abiding character of the American people.^ 

Meanwhile the administrations of Johnson and Grant had 703. Foreign 
witnessed important negotiations with foreign countries. We 1868-1876' 

have already noticed how both England and France favored the Maximilian 

-^ ^ an Mexico 

South in our Civil War, and how eager the agents of the Con- 
federacy were to get substantial aid from these countries, until 
the disasters at Vicksburg and Gettysburg made the Southern 
cause seem hopeless to Europe (p. 454). Emperor Napoleon III 
thought the moment of civil strife in America favorable for the 
expansion of French interests in the Western Hemisphere. 
He prevailed upon Archduke Maximilian, brother of the em- 
peror of Austria, to accept the ^' throne of Mexico," and sent 
an army of 50,000 Frenchmen to uphold his dynasty. Maxi- 
milian, with his French army, easily made himself master of 
Mexico ; but when our Civil War was over. Secretary Seward 
politely informed the Emperor of the French that the United 
States could not allow the Monroe Doctrine to be thus infringed, 
and that no part of this Western Hemisphere was open to the 
encroachment of European powers. At the same time. General 
Grant, acting on the President's orders, sent General Sher- 
idan with an army to the Mexican border (1865). Napoleon, 
realizing that his position was untenable, withdrew his troops from 
Mexico. The unfortunate archduke, refusing to give up his 
precarious throne, was taken by the Mexicans, court-martialed, 
and shot (June, 1867). 

1 Great credit is due Tilden for his honorable and patriotic refusal to listen 
to any proposal of a resort to force in behalf of his claims. Whether or not 
Hayes was fairly elected it is impossible to know. The votes of South Caro- 
lina and Florida in all probability were rightly his, but Louisiana was more 
doubtful. On the one hand, intimidation kept the negroes from casting their Re- 
publican votes, and, on the other hand, the Republican returning board was charged 
with fraud in the counting. Which of these wrongs outbalanced the other is im- 
possible to say. Tilden had a large majority of the popular vote of the country. 



498 



The Crisis of Disunion 



704. The 

Alabama 

Claims 



705. The 
Geneva tri- 
bunal, 1872 



The British government entertained no such wild scheme as 
Napoleon's of setting up an empire in the Western Hemisphere, 
but its offense against the United States was more direct and 
serious. In spite of warnings from our minister, Charles Francis 
Adams, the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Russell, allowed war- 
ships built for the Confederacy to leave the ports of England to 
prey on the commerce of the United States. The Floiida sailed 
in March, 1862, and the famous Alabama slipped away from 
Liverpool in July. The next summer two ironclad rams were 
ready to leave Laird's shipyards, when they were stopped by 
Lord Russell, to whom Adams wrote curtly, " It would be super- 
fluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war." 
The damage done to the commerce of the United States by the 
Alabama and the other cruisers built in England for the 
Confederacy was immense.-^ Not only did they destroy some 
$20,000,000 worth of our merchant ships and cargoes on the 
high seas, but their encouragement of the Confederate cause 
prolonged the war perhaps for many months. 

Charles Sumner, the chairman of the Senate committee on 
foreign relations, made the extravagant demand that the British 
government should pay $200,000,000 damages and give up all 
its colonies on the mainland of America (Canada, Honduras, 
Guiana). On May 8, 187 1, British and American commissioners 
signed a treaty at Washington adjusting some points of dispute in 
the perennial boundary and fishery questions, and agreeing that 
the claims of the United States for damage done her commerce 
by the Alabaina and the other offending cruisers should be set- 
tled by an international arbitration tribunal to meet at Geneva 
in Switzerland. Besides the British representative (Lord Cock- 
bum) and the American (Charles Francis Adams), the tribunal 



1 After destroying about sixty Northern merchant vessels, the Alabama was 
sunk by the Union warship Kearsarge^ Captain Winslow, in a spectacular battle 
off the coast of Cherbourg, France, June 19, 1864. The Shenandoah ^2x\o\\\&x swift 
commerce destroyer in the Confederate navy, was still cruising in the Pacific 
when the news reached her, several weeks after the surrender of Lee and 
Johnston, that the Civil War was over. 



The Era of Reconstruction 



499 



contained a distinguished statesman from each of the countries of 
Switzerland, Italy, and Brazil. The tribunal decided that Great 
Britain had been guilty of a breach of the neutrality laws in 
allowing the cruisers to sail from her ports, and awarded the 
United States damages to the amount of $15,500,000 in gold 
(September, 1872).^ 

In striking contrast to the attitude of France and Great Britain 706. Thepur- 
toward the United States in its struggle with the Southern Con- Alaska" 
federacy was the friendly bearing of Russia, where, by a strange ^^^^^ ^°' 
coincidence. Czar Alexander II freed the serfs (March 3, 1861) 




Map of Alaska superimposed on the United States 

less than two years before Lincoln published his Emancipation 
Proclamation. Therefore, when Russia, at the close of the war,, 
asked us to buy Alaska of her, we were favorably disposed 
toward the negotiations. The distant arctic region had appar- 
ently little value except for its seal fisheries, but Secretary 
Seward closed the bargain for its purchase, March 30, 1867. 
The price paid Russia for 577,390 square miles of frozen terri- 
tory was $7,200,000, or about two cents an acre. It has proved 

1 At the same time, the United States was condemned to pay Great Britain 
about ^5,500,000 for violating the fisheries treaty of 1818. 



500 The Crisis of Disunion 

an exceptionally good purchase, the gold taken in the last dec- 
ade from the Yukon valley alone being worth far more than 
the $7,200,000 paid for the territory. 

707. secre- It was fortunate for the country that we had two such able 
and Fish, and judicious men as Seward and Hamilton Fish at the head 
1866-1875 q£ ^^ State Department during the troubled administrations of 

Johnson and Grant. Fish, who was one of the few good ap- 
pointments of President Grant, rendered the country great serv- 
ices besides his negotiations with Great Britain in the treaty of 
Washington and the Alabama claims. He kept the President 
from hastily recognizing the Cubans as belligerents in their re- 
volt against Spanish authority in the island in the summer of 
1869 ; and four years later brought the Spanish government to 
terms for the rash execution of eight American citizens captured 
on board the vessel Virgifiius, which was carrying arms to the 
Cuban rebels. He restrained the President in his mad desire 
to purchase and annex the republic of Santo Domingo through 
a treaty negotiated by his private secretary. Had our congres- 
sional leaders been men of the stamp of Seward and Fish dur- 
ing this period, instead of the violent, vindictive Stevens, the 
unspeakable demagogue Butler, the visionary Sumner, and the 
proud, uncompromising partisan Conkling, American history 
would have been spared many humiliating pages. 

708. The The closing year of Grant's presidency (1876) was the cen- 
Expos^Swi at tennial of American independence. The event was celebrated 
Philadelphia, ^y ^ ^^^^^ world's fair at Philadelphia, the birthplace of the 

republic. Ten million visitors to the exposition grounds caught 
the inspiration of the wonderful achievements in science and 
invention which the years of peace were bringing forth. The 
Centennial Exposition was a pledge of the recovery of our nation 
from the political, industrial, and financial difficulties brought on 
by the awful Civil War. Already the rule of the stranger was 
passing in the Southern states, and a Mississippi congressman 
had pronounced a eulogy over the body of Charles Sumner, 
exhorting his fellow countrymen to know one another that they 



The Era of Reconstrtcction 501 

might love one another (1874), Already the United States had 
passed a law pledging the payment of every dollar of its war 
debt in the precious metals of gold and silver (1875). Already 
a national convention had declared in its platform that " the 
United States is a nation and not a mere league of states" 
(1876). It had taken a full hundred years, and cost a long and 
bloody war to decide that point. The century had seen the 
rounding out of our national domain. The railroad ran from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific, and all the area between had been 
organized into states or territories. The country was ready for 
new tasks, and the belted wheels, the giant shafts, the electric 
lights, the splendid specimen products of the farms, gardens, 
and wheat fields of the land, the improved models in machinery, 
and the wonderful inventions in transportation, which were dis- 
played at the Centennial Exposition of 1876, were all a witness 
and a prophecy of the new era of industrial expansion on which 
we were entering. 

REFERENCES 

How the North used its Victory : W. A. Dunning, Recoitsiniciion^ 
Political and Economic (American Nation Series), chaps, i-v ; also 
Military Government dtcring Reconstruction and The Ftvcess of Recon- 
struction [Essays on the Civil War and' Reconstruction); W. L. Fleming, 
Documentary History of Reconstruction, Vol. I, chaps, ii-v ; J. W. Bur- 
gess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, chaps, i-viii ; J. G. Blaine, 
Twenty Years of Congress, '\o\. II, chaps, i-xii ; William MacDonald, 
Select Documents of United States History, i86i-i8g8, Nos. 42-44, 50-52, 
56-62 ; A, B. Hart, American History told by Contemporaries, Vol. IV, 
Nos. 145-153; Hugh McCulloch, Men and Measures of Half a Cen- 
tury, chaps, xxv-xxvii; J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from 
the Compromise of 18^0, Vol. V, chap, xxx ; Vol. VI, chaps, xxxi, xxxii; 
series of articles on Reconstruction in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 
LXXXVII, pp. 1-15, 145-157. 354-365. 473-484- 

The Recovery of the Nation: Dunning (Am. Nation) chaps, v-xxi; 
also The Impeachment and Trial of President fohnson {Essays on the 
Civil War and Reconstruction)', Fleming, Vol. I, chap, vi; Vol. II, 
chaps, vii-xiii; Burgess, chaps, ix-xiv; Blaine, Vol. II, chaps, xiii- 
XXV ; E. B. Andrews, The United States in our own Time, chaps, i-viii; 



502 The Crisis of Disunion 

Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency^ chaps, xxiii-xxv ; P. L. 
Haworth, The Hayes-Tilden Eleclivn ; Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 159, 174- 
176; MacDonald, Nos. 66-101; McCulloch, chaps, xxiii, xxvii; 
Rhodes, Vol. VI, chaps, xxxiii-xxxix ; Vol. VII, chaps, xl-xliv ; Fred- 
erick Bancroft, William H. Seward, Vol. II, chaps, xl-xliii; Hamlin 
Garland, Ulysses S. Grant, chaps, xxxix-1 ; T. N. Page, The People of 
the South during Reconstncction {Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXXVIII, 
pp. 289-304) ; MooRFiELD Story, Charles Sumner, chaps, xix-xxiv. 

TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Ku KluxKlans : Hart, Vol. IV, No. 156; Rhodes, Vol. VI, 
pp. 180-191, 306-320; Fleming, Vol. II, pp. 327-377 ; W. G. Brown, 
The Lower South in American Histoiy, pp. 191-225; J. W. Garner, 
Reconst7'uction ift Mississippi, pp. 338-353 ; D. L. WiLSON, The Ku-Klux 
Klans [Cefttury Magazine, Vol. VI, pp. 398-410) ; Mrs. M. L. Avary, 
Dixie after the IVa?; pp. 268-278. 

2. Thaddeus Stevens, Radical : Blaine, Vol. II, pp. 128-133 ; Rhodes, 
Vol. V, pp. 541-544; Vol. VI, pp. 13-34; Reminiscences of Carl Schurz, 
Vol. Ill, pp. 214-217 ; S. W. McCall, Thaddeus Stevens, pp. 256-308 ; 
E. B. Callender, Thaddeus Stevens, Commoner; A. K. McClure, 
Li?icohi and Me7i of War Times, pp. 263-272. 

3. The Treaty ofWashington: C.Y.A-daus, Lee at Appomattox and Other 
Papers, pp. 31-198 ; Rhodes, Vol. VI, pp. 335-341, 360-376 ; Andrews, 
pp. 87-92 ; W. H. Seward, Diplomatic History of the War for the Union, 
pp. 446-481; Bancroft,Vo1. II, pp. 382-399,492-500; Story, pp. 340-350. 

4. The Reconstruction of Louisiana: Rhodes, Vol. V, pp. 52-57, 135- 
137; Vol. VII, pp. 104-127 ; MacDonald, No. 69; Andrews, pp. 8a- 
85, 152-167 ; Albert Phelps, A^7£; Orleans and Reconstruction {Atlantic 
Monthly, Vol. LXXXVIII, pp. 121-131) ; C. H. McCarthy, Lincoln's 
Plan of Reco7istruction, pp. 36-76, 314-383; Why the Solid South (essays 
on Reconstruction by noted Southerners), pp. 383-429; E. B. Scott, 
Reconstruction during the Civil War, pp. 325-373. 

5. The Purchase of Alaska: Hart, Vol. IV, No. 174; Blaine, Vol. 
II, pp. 333-340 ; MacDonald, No. 63 ; F. Bancroft, William H. 
Seward, N o\. II, pp. 474-479; H. H. Bkhcroyt, History of Alaska {V^or^is, 
Vol. XXXIII, ed. of 1886), pp. 590-629. 

6. The Quarrel between Johnson and Stanton : Rhodes, Vol. VI, pp. 
65-68, 99-115 ; McCulloch, pp. 390-398; Blaine, Vol. II, pp. 348- 
355; Hart, Vol. IV, No. 154; G. C. Gorham, Edwiit M. Stanton, 
Vol. II, pp. 393-445 ; D. M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of 
Andrew Johnson, pp. 239-287, 314-338; Garland, pp. 365-372. 



PART VII. THE POLITICAL AND 
INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE RE- 
PUBLIC SINCE THE CIVIL WAR 



PART VII. THE POLITICAL AND 

INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE 

REPUBLIC SINCE THE 

CIVIL WAR 

CHAPTER XVIII ,-^.^y 

TWENTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN SUPREMACY 

The New Industrial Age 

The Civil War marks a turning point in our history. While 709. The 
it settled political and moral questions which had been vexing aTumiifg 
the American people for nearly half a century, it opened other poi^^t in 
questions, industrial and economic, which have been increasingly history- 
absorbing the attention of our statesmen for a generation. It 
cleared the way for the development of the great free West 
through the renewed migration of the farmer, the miner, and 
the ranchman, — a migration which was promoted by the liberal 
distribution of public lands to Western settlers and the comple- 
tion of the railway to the Pacific coast. It changed the scene 
and the setting of our national stage, bringing on the railroad 
magnate, the corporation promoter, the capitalist legislator, the 
socialist agitator, in place of the old champion of " free speech, 
free soil, free men," and the old defender of the Constitution 
and the Union. 

It will help us to understand the nature of this new economic 710. it de- 
• n • n 1 - r ^1 • cided the 

age if we notice bneny at the outset some or the more impor- supremacy of 

tant results which sprang directly from the Civil War. In the ^^^ °fhe°'' 

first place, the war decided the supremacy of the nation over the states 

505 



5o6 Histojy of the Republic since the Civil War 

states. From the days of the ratification of the Constitution 
do\s*n to the secession of South Carolina, there had been \\-idely 
divergent opinions among our statesmen as to the amount of 
power the states had "' delegated '' or resigned to the national 
government. The states, both North and South, had been ver)' 
jealous of any encroachment upon their powers and pri\'ileges 
by the authorities at \\^ashington. They had frequently claimed 
the right to suspend or annul an act of Congress which they 
judged to be a violation of the Constitution ; and in some in- 
stances they had even threatened to secede from the Union 
unless such offensive acts were repealed.^ 

711. In- But the appeal to arms in 1861-1865 had not only put to 
traordiary^" ^est the idea of a sepaiate Southern Confederacy ; it had stimu- 

powers as- lated the national government to the exercise of great and un- 

sumed by the ^ ^ 

President and usual powers. The President had suspended the regular process 

during the of the courts in the arrest and trial of men for treason ; he had 
^^ recognized loyal minorities in some of the Southern states as 

the true state governments : he had, by proclamation, emanci- 
pated the slaves of all men in rebellion against the United 
States. Congress had imposed direct taxes, had created a na- 
tional banking system, had borrowed huge sums of money, 
had put into circulation paper currency, had admitted the loyal 
counties of Virginia to the Union as the new state of West Vir- 
ginia, and finally proposed an amendment to the Constitution 
(the thirteenth) abolishing slaven.- in even- part of the coimtr\-. 
WTien the war was over, therefore, national supremacy was firmly 
established : and it has grown stronger rather than weaker in 
the years that have followed. 

712. The war Another, and a still more important, result of the war was the 
dom^hrough- decision that this reunited countr}- should be free soil from sea 
out the whole ^^ g^^ WestsAard expansion has been the most influential and 
domain continuous factor in our national development. From the days 

1 The student will recall the protest of ^"i^ginia and Kentucky against the 
Alien and Sedition laws in 179S. of the Hartford Convention against the War of 
iSi2.andof South Carolina against the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 (pp. 202, 223, 273). 



Twenty Years of Republic a7i Supremacy 507 

when the colonial pioneers first pushed across the ridges of the 
Alleghenies, almost all our great political problems have been 
intimately connected with the growth of our country and the 
development of its vast natural resources. The great outburst 
of national enthusiasm which followed the War of 18 12 and 
which was encouraged by the invention of the reaper, the 
steam railway, and the electric telegraph would have led un- 
doubtedly to the rapid extension of our population and our 
industry to the Far West, had not the awful slavery question 
cast its sinister shadow across the path of the pioneer. The 
broad fields of Kansas, which now produce a hundred million 
bushels of com, were destined first to be fertilized by the blood 
of civil strife. The triumph of the cause of freedom brought the 
assurance that our immense Western domain was to be filled not 
by hostile factions wrangling over the constitutional and moral 
right of the white man to hold the negro in slavery, but by fellow 
Americans competing in the generous rivalry of developing a 
common heritage and building a new empire of industry. These 
two great principles of Union and Liberty, vindicated by the 
Civil War, are the most precious possession of the American 
people, and the sole guarantee of the third ideal in our political 
trinity, — Democracy. 

But in the very settlement of the questions of disunion and 713. New 
slavery the war opened up other problems, some of which have opened by the 
become as serious a menace as disunion or slavery to our civiiwar 
national welfare. Aside from the immediate political problem 
of restoring the seceded states to their proper position in the 
Union, there were economic questions of the gravest impor- 
tance to face. The enormous expenses of the war had been 
met in three ways, — by increased taxation, by borrowing, and 
by issuing " bills of credit." These latter consisted of several 
hundred million dollars' worth of paper notes on which was 
stamped the government's promise to pay the holder when it 
should have the money. They were not, like our present paper 
"bills," the "certificates" or assurance that the government 



5o8 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

actually had in its vaults the gold and silver to pay them. A 
certain amount of gold the government was obliged to have, of 
course, to pay the interest on its bonds — for neither foreign nor 
native purchasers of those bonds would accept as interest simply 
the government's promise to pay, printed on pieces of paper. 
To get the gold necessary to pay its obligations to the bond- 
holders and so keep its credit in the eyes of the world, the 
government was obliged to look to the wealthy bankers of the 
Eastern cities, who alone had the cash available. 

714. The Now the result of such dependence of the government on the 
of money in moneyed men was highly injurious to our democratic ideals.^ 
politics ^ clique of Wall Street bankers practically managed the country 

during Grant's presidency ; and ever since that time the great 
capitalists who have financed our railroads, our mines, our oil 
fields, our steel mills, and our packing houses have expected 
and received from Congress favors and immunities which have 
made them fabulously rich and bred in many of them the belief 
that the government exists primarily for the purpose of protect- 
ing and increasing their private wealth. Corruption, bribery, and 
graft are the inevitable results of the undue influence of money 
in politics. Men are often put into office for the favors they can 
procure for the business interests that pay their election expenses, 
and not for the services they can render to their city, state, or 
nation. And every attempt to take the bestowal of public office 
out of the hands of the professional politician and restore it to 
the people is met by the solid opposition of the party ''machine," 
backed by its accumulated funds of corruption and bribery. 

715. Various Along with the problem of cleansing our politics from the 
iems^,poiiticai corrupting influence of unscrupulous or " tainted " wealth have 
and economic g^j^g ^^ great problems of devising a tariff which shall provide 

adequate revenues for the government and insure American 
workmen against the lower wages paid in foreign countries, 
without at the same time putting millions of dollars into the 

1 The student will remember that it was for this reason that Jackson engaged 
in his bitter struggle with the United States Bank. 



Twenty Years of Republican Supremacy 509 

already swollen pockets of a few trust magnates ; of controlling 
the great transportation lines and other industries indispensable 
to the public welfare ; of conserving our forests, coal deposits, 
oil fields, water sites, and phosphate beds ; of furnishing a cur- 
rency which shall be abundant enough to meet the needs of our 
rapidly developing business, and yet not so plentiful as to be 
cheap in the eyes of the world; of preserving the peace and 
protecting property threatened by violent strikes or labor wars ; 
of encouraging the prosperity of our Western farms ; of increas- 
ing the fertility of our arid plains ; and of regulating the flood 
of foreign immigration to our shores. 

The constant occupation of our government in the last genera- 716. The 
tion with these industrial and economic problems has given to absorbing 

American history an entirely different character from that which economic 

-^^ ■' problems on 

it had in the middle years of the nineteenth century. In the the character 

first place, it has made our recent history much more difficult 
to grasp. Almost everybody can understand William Lloyd 
Garrison's impassioned pleas for the abolition of slavery, or 
Thomas H. Benton's extravagant prophecies of the future of 
the Pacific coast, or Daniel Webster's eloquent defense of the 
Union " one and inseparable," or Abraham Lincoln's homely, 
honest arguments for the laws of the country and of humanity 
in the famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas. But only ex- 
perts can follow intelligently the arguments for and against an 
increase in the amount of money issued by the banks and the 
Treasury, or judge wisely the numerous schedules of a tariff bill, 
or grasp the complex problems involved in fixing a fair rate 
which a railroad may charge for freight. 

Then, too, these economic questions which concern our gov- 717. The lack 
emment so exclusively to-day seem to have a far less romantic elements in 
character than the great moral and political questions of half a an economic 
century ago. "Union "and "liberty" are words which make a pow- 
erful appeal to the people at large, and their defense invites the 
best efforts of the orator and the statesman. But the everyday 
drudgery of our political housekeeping necessary to preserve 



3IO History of the Republic since the Civil War 

us as a clean and orderly nation has little glamour to attract 
the attention and applause of the multitude. It is only in the 
last few years, with the unprecedented development of our great 
monopolies beyond the restraints of law, that the regulation of 
private wealth, the " curbing of the trusts,"' the protection of 
the public health, the conser\'ation of our natural resources, the 
purging of our cities, — all have assumed the nature of a moral 
crusade, comparable to the antislaven* movement and the rising 
for the Union. 

718. The In the pages which follow, the student will find t^vo main in- 

ences at^ork Auences at work, — the rapid economic development of a free, 

in our most united people : and the efforts of popular government to con- 
recent history r r » r r & 

trol that development by the due forms of law. Our military 
histOR-, except for the episode of the Spanish War of 1898 and 
the Philippine insurrection, has been insignificant in the last 
generation. Our diplomatic relations are meager when com- 
pared with those of European states. Our political questions 
are mainly -those raised, not by differences of opinion on the 
meaning of phrases of the Constitution, but by the conflicting 
interests of producer and consumer, of freight shipper and 
freight carrier, of capitalist and wage earner. We are li\-ing in 
an industrial age. 

The Republican ^Machine 

719. Change For a full score of years after Lee handed his sword to 
lican^party^' Grant at Appomattox, Republican Presidents occupied the 
after 1805 \Miite House. and during more than half that period Repub- 
lican majorities sat in both Houses of Congress.^ But the Re- 
publican part}' of Johnson and Grant was a ver\- different thing 
from the Republican part}' of Abraham Lincoln. The original 

1 The Presidents between 1S65 and 1SS4 were Johnson (1865-1869), Grant 
(1869-1877), Hayes (1S77-1SS1).' Garfield (18S1), Arthur (1881-1885). The 
Senate was Republican except for the last two years of Hayes's administration 
(1879-18S1), while the House went Democratic in the elections of 1S74, i^76> 
1878^ 1882- 



Tiuenty Years of Repziblican Supremacy 511 

party was formed of progressive men, — '' come-outers " from 
the Whigs and Democrats. It inscribed on its banners the pres- 
ervation of the Union and the exclusion of slavery from the 
territories of the United States. Both these purposes were ful- 
filled in 1865, when the armies of the Confederacy surrendered 
and the Thirteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution. 
With its high aims accomplished, and with its great leader mur- 
dered, the Republican party underwent a striking change during 
the second decade of its existence. It fell under the domination 
of a group of uncompromising men in Congress, who quarreled 
with President Johnson, inflicted the severe penalty of Recon- 
struction on the South, maintained the high tariffs of war days, 
and bent every effort to securing a permanent hold on the 
machinery of the government. The merits of the Republican 
party had been great; its prestige in 1865 was fully deserved; 
but when it sought to justify its blind partisan creed that the 
worst Republican was better than the best Democrat, on the 
ground that '^ the party which had saved the Union must rule 
it," it was passing beyond the limits of good sense. 

We have seen how the Republican majorities in Congress 720. The 
flouted President Johnson, and how the Senate, in the exciting thrradi^^^? °^ 

impeachment trial, came within a single vote of ejecting him Republican 

^ .J J congressmen, 

from the highest office of the Republic. We have seen how these 1866-1876 

same majorities managed the simple, guileless Grant, forcing him 
" for party's sake " into a policy of ungenerous coercion toward 
the South ; imploring him " for party's sake " to cover up rev- 
elations of fraud and misgovernment ; encouraging him " for 
party's sake " to form a close alliance between the government 
and the great financiers, whose wealth, protected and fostered 
by high-tariff legislation, was so convenient a factor in the 
winning of political campaigns. We have seen how corrupt 
rings and cliques plundered the public treasury, defrauding the 
honest taxpayer of millions of dollars.-^ 

1 See pages 490-493 for the impeachment of President Johnson and the account 
of the state of the country during Grant's term of office. 



512 History of the Repitblic since the Civil War 



723. The 
Union Pacific 
and the Credit 
Mobilier 
scandal 



Not only the public treasury, but the public domain also was 
plundered. Our government, always generous in its encourage- 
ment of Western migration, had outdone itself in the Home- 
stead Act of 1862, which gave a tract of 160 acres free of 
charge to any head of a family who would cultivate it for five 
years. In a little over ten years after the passage of the act 
40,000,000 acres of our public land (an area equal to more 
than one fourth the surface of France) were given away, osten- 
sibly as " homesteads," but actually often to " land grabbers " 
or " land sharks." These men, by submitting fraudulent lists 
of " settlers " to the land office, accumulated immense estates, 
which contained invaluable resources of timber, minerals, and 
water power. Their spirit was expressed in the words of one 
of the Montana land sharks, " We who are on the ground in- 
tend to get whatever land there is lying around." The discovery 
of copper, silver, and gold in Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Dakota, 
Wyoming, and Nevada enhanced the value of these public lands 
a hundredfold, and put into private purses wealth that would 
have been sufficient to maintain our government. 

In the same year that it passed the Homestead Act (1862) 
Congress chartered five Pacific Railroad companies, and in the 
years immediately following granted these companies over 100,- 
000,000 acres of public lands and loans in government bonds 
amounting to $60,000,000. The 47,000,000 acres granted to 
the Northern Pacific alone were estimated by a high official in 
the railroad business to be valuable enough " to build the entire 
railroad to Puget Sound, to fit out a fleet of sailing vessels and 
steamers for the China and India trade, and leave a surplus 
that would roll up into the millions." 

In spite of the generosity of Congress, private capital was 
very wary, and only about ten miles of the Union Pacific Rail- 
road had been built by 1865, when a company called the '' Credit 
Mobilier of America " signed a contract with the Union Pacific 
Company to finish the work. With the help of further liberal 
grants from the government the immense task of running a 



Twenty Years of Republican Snprejnacy 5 1 3 

railroad 1800 miles from the Missouri River to the Pacific 
coast, over yawning chasms and precipitous ledges, through 
long deserts where the only signs of life were the black herds 
of buffaloes or the hostile bands of Sioux and Cheyennes, was 
finally accomplished. On the tenth of May, 1869, the last spike, 
completing rail connections from New York to San Francisco, 
was driven at Ogden, Utah. But even this greatest feat of 
American engineering (with the exception of the construction 
of the Panama Canal) was performed under the shadow of our 







mw%^ 



Driving the Last Spike in the Union Pacific Railroad 



widespread corruption. Members of Congress were guilty of 
accepting shares of the Cre'dit Mobilier stock in return for their 
votes granting legislative favors to the road. 

The protest against the corrupt rule of the Republican ma- 724. The 
chine in President Grant's day came chiefly from the agricul- the Grangers 
tural West. A secret organization, called the Grangers, or Jo^^^^^jQ^j^g 
Patrons of Husbandry, founded by the farmers in 1867, had seventies 
grown by 1875 ^^ number over 1,500,000 members, living 
mostly in the South and West. The main purpose of the 
Grangers was to get favorable transportation rates for the prod- 
ucts of their farms. The railroad mileage of the country had 



mands of the 
laboring class 



514 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

increased from 30,000 miles in i860 to 50,000 in 1870, and was 
growing at the rate of 3000 miles a year. Between 1869 and 
1873 the New York Central, the Hudson River, and the Lake 
Shore roads were joined to make through connections between 
New York and Chicago under a single management. By 1875 
there were five trunk lines from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic 
seaboard. The high rates of freight charged by these roads to 
repay the cost of their construction and maintenance, their 
greediness for public-land grants and state subsidies, their rate 
discriminations in favor of big shippers or chosen localities, all 
turned popular feeling in the West decidedly against the rail- 
roads after 1870. 

725. De- The financial panic which came upon the country in 1873, 
sending up the price of living and causing great misery among 
the working classes, still further widened the gap between the 

privileged rich and the struggling poor, between capital and 
labor, monopoly and destitution. Strikes occurred, especially 
on the railroads and in the mines. Labor congresses, held in 
our largest cities, made public the demands of the working 
classes for an eight-hour day, for the exclusion of Chinese 
laborers from the country, for the government inspection of 
mines and factories, for the direct issue of money by the gov- 
ernment instead of by the banks, for the cessation of land 
grants to railroads or corporations, for the regulation of rail- 
road rates, a tax on incomes, and the establishment of a national 
Department of Labor at Washington. 

726. The The agitation for the relief of the debtor class and the reform 
G?e\^nback- ^^ \'2^ox conditions resulted in the formation of the National 
Labor party, Greenback-Labor party, which entered the presidential contest 

of 1876 with the New York philanthropist Peter Cooper as its 
candidate, and with a platform demanding that the government 
suppress the bank issues of currency and make its own unlimited 
issue of greenbacks legal tender for the payment of all debts. 
Cooper received only 82,000 votes, but in the next congressional 
election (1878) the Greenback party polled over 1,000,000 votes. 



Twenty Years of Republican Supremacy 5 1 5 



It was, therefore, a critical situation that faced Mr. Hayes 
when the Electoral Commission voted him into the presidential 
chair on the second of March, 1877, only two days before his 
inauguration (p. 496). Half the country believed that Tilden 
had been elected. Hayes appeared in cartoons with the word 
" fraud " written across his brow. For more than a year after 
his inauguration Congress dallied with the proposal to reopen 
the question of his title to the presidency. Moreover, Hayes 
was not the choice of the leading men of his own party. The 
most influential senators and con- 
gressmen and the high executive 
officers were still " machine poli- 
ticians," in league with the pro- 
tected corporations and financial 
monopolies of the country. They 
were sore that the reform spirit, 
stirred by the protest of the West, 
had forced them to accept for their 
candidate the honest, plodding, pro- 
saic governor of Ohio in place of 
the brilliant, but unstable, party 
leader, James G. Blaine. The Re- 
publican Senate no less than the 

Democratic House ^ hampered Hayes in every way possible, 
refusing to confirm his excellent appointments, upbraiding him 
for his conciliatory policy toward the South, and sneering at him 
as a Puritan and an ungrateful hypocrite for his desire to reform 
the party machine, — to which, after all, he owed his high office. 

In spite of personal unpopularity, and in the face of political 
and economic turmoil, Mr. Hayes gave the country one of the 
cleanest and most courageous administrations in its history. 
He immediately withdrew the Federal troops that were still up- 
holding the negro Republican governments in Louisiana and 



727. Presi- 
dent Hayes 
antagonized 
by the ma- 
chine politi- 
cians 




Rutherford B. Hayes 



728. His 
excellent 
administra- 
tion, 1877- 
1881 



1 The Democrats had a majority of 20 in the House, while the Republicans 
held the Senate by a single vote (38 to ^^-j). 



J 



5 1 6 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

South Carolina, letting these states revert to the Democratic 
column.^ He still further incurred the wrath of the Republican 
machine by dismissing from their important offices Chester 
A. Arthur (collector of the port of New York), and Alonzo B. 
Cornell (naval officer), who with Thomas Piatt and Roscoe 
Conkling made up the " big four " who ruled the politics of 
New York state. Soon after his inauguration severe strikes, 
attended by rioting and the destruction of property, broke out 
among the employees of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsyl- 
vania, and the Erie railroads, which he quelled by the prompt 
dispatch of United States troops. He sent a commission to 
China to prepare the way for the negotiation of a treaty which 
would protect the workers of our Pacific coast against the inva- 
sion of cheap Mongolian labor.^ He strove earnestly to repair 
the faith of the nation in the eyes of the Indian tribes of the 
Far West, who had been fed on rotten rations, deceived by 
false promises, robbed by unscrupulous agents, and goaded into 
uprisings that had cost our government over $22,000,000 and 

1 Hayes was bitterly attacked and shamefully insulted by the men who were 
unwilling, twelve years after the war had ceased, to be reconciled with their 
Southern brethren, whom they still called " disloyal." They accused the Presi- 
dent of having made a " corrupt bargain " to withdraw the troops in return for 
Southern votes ; they denounced him as climbing into office over the bodies of 
tens of thousands of loyal Union soldiers ; they chided him for appointing a 
Southerner to a cabinet position. " To keep out of power the Democratic party 
and its semirebellious adherents both North and South," said a senator from 
Massachusetts, " has become a matter of supreme importance to the nation and 
the cause of humanitj' itself." 

2 Between 1850 and i860 the Chinese immigrants to our shores had increased 
from 10,000 to 40,000. The work on the western end of the Union Pacific Rail- 
road attracted tens of thousands more in the next decade. As these Chinese 
laborers lived on a few cents a day and were content with dirty quarters and poor 
food, they were a menace to the American laborer of the Pacific coast, who de- 
manded " four dollars a day and roast beef." Mobs in California and Oregon 
organized, to " run out of town " the Chinese coolies, in spite of the fact that our 
government, by the Burlingame Treaty of 186S, had guaranteed the Chinese 
visiting our shores protection in trade, religion, and free travel. In 1879 Con- 
gress repealed the Burlingame Treaty, but Hayes vetoed the bill. Finally, through 
the efforts of the Hayes commission, an arrangement was made with China by 
which that country agreed to our regulation of labor immigration from her 
shores. Under President Arthur a bill was passed (1882), entirely excluding 
Chinese laborers for a period of ten years. The Chinese Exclusion Bill was 
renewed in 1892 and 1902. 



1878 



Twenty Years of Republican Stcpremacy 5 1 7 

the lives of nearly 600 men since the Civil War.^ The machine 
politicians sneered at Hayes' as a " v^eak President " and a 
'' goody-goody," and called his administration " a bread poul- 
tice." But fair-minded judges who had no political favors to 
ask and no fraudulent deals to cover up found the Hayes ad- 
ministration no mere soothing bread poultice, but rather a strong 
mustard plaster, which was effective in bringing out the poisons 
of political corruption. 

Two financial measures of importance were carried in Hayes's 
mid-term, — the Bland- Allison Act for the coinage of silver, and 
the bill for resumption of specie payments. 

From Washington's administration till long after the close of 729. The his- 

° . . ° . . tory of silver 

the Civil War comparatively little silver was coined into money coinage until 

at the United States mints. The business of the country was not 
large enough to demand more currency for its transactions than 
the supply of gold could furnish. The government stood ready 
to receive silver bullion at its mints for coinage at the estab- 
lished rate of fifteen ounces of silver to one ounce of gold be- 
fore 1834, and approximately sixteen ounces of silver to one 
ounce of gold after that date. But such was the comparative 
scarcity of silver in the middle years of the century that the 
mine owners could sell it to the jewelers and artisans at a 
higher price than the government paid. Between 1850 and 
1873, therefore, almost no silver was brought to the mints, 
and in the latter year Congress quietly passed a law stopping 
the coinage of silver dollars.^ Just at that moment enormous 

1 The most disastrous of these Indian uprisings was the resistance of the 
Sioux, under their chief Sitting Bull, to the orders of the government bidding 
them leave their hunting grounds in southern Montana and move further west. 
The gallant Colonel George A. Custer, with a force of 262 men, trying to sur- 
prise Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn River,- was defeated and killed with 
every soul of his little army, June 25, 1876. 

2 This law simply recognized the state of affairs which existed. Since the 
amount of silver which went into a silver dollar could be sold to the silversmiths 
for ^1.02 in 1873, the mine owners naturally disposed of their product in the 
market where it brought the highest price. It was they, and not the government, 
that discontinued silver coinage. In later years the advocates of the free coinage 
of silver spoke of this act as the "crime of 1873," — as if the government had 
repudiated silver and cheapened it by refusing to coin it. 



5 1 8 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

deposits of silver were discovered in our Western states. One 
mine, whose product in 1873 was worth but $645,000, increased 
its output to $16,000,000 in two years. The famous Comstock 
lode in Nevada yielded $42,000,000 in three years. Our total 
production of silver, which was $1,000,000 annually in 1861, 
rose to $30,000,000 in 1875. The market was flooded. The 
price of silver fell, and the mine owners were anxious again to 
sell their product to the government at the old rate. In 1874, 
for the first time in a generation, the silver in a dollar was worth 
more than the same weight of silver in a napkin ring or an um- 
brella handle. The mine owners, therefore, clamored for the 
repeal of the law of 1873 and the resumption of silver coinage. 
They were joined in their demand by the large class of Western 
farmers, who, being obliged to borrow money for the develop- 
ment of their farms and the transportation of their crops, found 
themselves obliged to pay high rates of interest to the bankers 
of the East, who controlled the nation's gold. 
730. The So Representative Richard P. Bland of Missouri introduced 

Act^ofiSy^^'^ into Hayes's first Congress a bill for the unlimited, or " free, " 
coinage of silver at the old rate of approximately 16 to i. The 
bill was modified in the Senate by Allison of Iowa. Instead of 
accepting unlimited amounts of silver presented at its mints for 
coinage, the government was to agree, by the Allison Amend- 
ment, to purchase not less than $2,000,000 worth nor more than 
$4,000,000 worth of silver a month. In this form the bill passed 
both Houses of Congress in February, 1878, and, although wisely 
vetoed by President Hayes, commanded the necessary two-thirds 
vote to override his veto. By the Bland- Allison Act, then, our gov- 
ernment pledged itself to take from the mine owners at least 
$24,000,000 worth of silver every year to coin into "dollars" 
which were worth, in 1878, less than ninety cents apiece. We 
shall see in a later chapter some of the results of this policy of 
trying, simply by stamping the United States eagle upon coins, 
to make them more valuable than the worth of the metal they 
contain. 



Twenty Year's of Republican Supremacy 519 

The other financial measure of the Hayes administration was 731. There- 
the resumption of specie payments, which means the decision and gpecfe^pay!- 
promise of the United States to pay its obligations in '' specie," ni^nts, 1879 
or coin. The " greenbacks," or legal-tender notes issued to the 
amount of about $450,000,000 during the Civil War, were simply 
pieces of paper on which were printed the government's prom- 
ise to pay the bearer the amount specified when the United 
States should have the money. The intention of the govern- 
ment was to "redeem" (or ''retire," or "cancel") these green- 
backs by cash payment, just as we should cancel our " private 
note" handed to a friend for a loan of money made us when we 
were in financial straits. The government had actually redeemed 
about $100,000,000 worth of the greenbacks, when the Western 
farmers, from that same need of a currency uncontrolled by 
Eastern bankers which impelled them to demand the renewal 
of silver coinage, demanded that the government should not 
only stop redeeming the greenbacks but that it should actually 
issue many millions more. 

Congress refused to heed this demand, and passed a law in 
1875, fixing January i, 1879, as the date when the Treasury of 
the United States would redeem in coin^ all the outstanding 
greenbacks. During the years 187 7-18 78, John Sherman, 
Hayes's able Secretary of the Treasury, accumulated some 
$140,000,000 worth of gold by the sale of bonds at home and 
abroad ; and when resumption day came, so perfect was the faith 
of the people in the credit of the government that greenbacks 
to the amount of only about $135,000 were presented at the 
Treasury to be exchanged for gold. From that day to the present 
all the paper notes of the United States have circulated on a par 
with silver and gold. There was still to come a struggle (to be 
traced in a later chapter) as to whether gold or silver should be 
the metal in which the government's debts were to be paid. But 

1 Since the government practically recognized gold as the standard " coin " 
in 1875, by demanding gold in payment of customs dues and paying in gold the 
interest on its bonds, specie payment was taken to mean gold payment. 



520 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

the danger of a flood of cheap paper currency, which had nearly 
swamped the government in the critical years following the 
American Revolution, was past. History shows no parallel of 
a nation so rapidly and easily recovering from a war debt of 
billions of dollars. 

The Party Revolution of 1884 

732. The ma- The Success of the resumption policy and the rapid recovery 
ity of Yhe^^"^' ^^ °^^ public credit were due primarily neither to the wisdom of 

North and ^^ President nor to the skill of Secretary Sherman, but to the 

West after ^ ' 

the Civil War wonderful material prosperity of the North and West during the 

twenty years following the fall of Fort Sumter. For the South 
the war meant prostration and exhaustion. Her money was 
gone, her industries destroyed ; her fields were trampled by the 
hoofs of war chargers, and her strong men were lying on a thou- 
sand battlefields. But for the North the war was a stimulus. 
The demands of the army for men were not large enough to be 
a drain on the industrial population, while the demands for sup- 
plies at the high prices the country was forced in its extremity 
to pay were sufficient to create great manufacturing activity. 
The high protective tariffs which Congress passed during the 
war also contributed largely to the industrial boom in home 
manufactures ; and the disbanding of over a million soldiers in 
1865, which in any European country would have caused hard 
times by glutting the labor market, only furnished the hands 
needed to harvest our immense crops and turn the wheels of 
our expanding industries. 

733. Census Whatever chapter of the census reports we open for the ^^o 
fife t?e^^°^' ^^^ following -the war, we read the same story. Our coal out- 
growth of our put increased fivefold and our steel output a hundredfold in the 
productions, r 
manufacture, period from 1865 to 1875. The wheat crop in Dakota alone in- | 

creased from 1000 bushels in i860 to 3,000,000 in 1880, and * 
the com crop in Kansas from 6,000,000 to over 100,000,000 
bushels. When the Civil War opened we were producing about 1 1 
$50,000,000 worth of precious metals annually; twenty years 



and trade 



Twenty Years of Republican Supremacy 521 

later the single state of Colorado was taking from its mines over 
$1,000,000 worth of gold, lead, and silver per month. Nevada, 
which was a mining camp of less than 7000 inhabitants in i860, 
had grown by 1870 into a state of the Union with a population 
of 42,000. In the decade preceding the war our manufactures 
increased 1 4 per cent ; in the decade following they increased 
79 per cent. The year of Hayes's election marks the permanent 
change in favor of the United States in the statistics of foreign 
trade. Before 1876 our exports had exceeded our imports in 
but three years (1857, 1862, 1874) ; since 1876 there have been 
but three years (1888, 1889, 1898) in which our imports have 
exceeded our exports. 

The wealth of the country grew from $16,000,000,000 to 734. our 
$43,000,000,000 between i860 and 1880 ; and the deposits in Z^^^'^l^^ 
our savings banks (the best index of a nation's prosperity) in- 
creased 600 per cent. During the same period our population 
grew from 30,000,000 to 50,000,000, while the liberal homestead 
laws and the development of the Western railroads attracted 
an unprecedented number of Irish, German, and Scandinavian 
immigrants to the fertile farm lands beyond the Mississippi. 
Between i860 and 1870 Arizona, Colorado, Dakota, Idaho, 
Montana, and Wyoming were organized as territories, and 
Kansas, Nebraska, and Nevada were admitted as states of the 
Union. Edmund Burke, in his famous " Speech on Conciliation 
with America," delivered in Parliament in 1775, had exclaimed, 
" Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part 
of the world that, state the numbers as high as we will, while 
the dispute continues the exaggeration ends." It seemed in 
1875 ^^ though the orator's enthusiastic language of a century 
earlier were fulfilled in sober fact. 

Now the natural tendency of parties in power during periods 735. The sit- 
of prosperity is to attribute that prosperity entirely to their own pepubiican^^ 
wise management of the country's politics ; and they have little P^^y, 1880 
difficulty in persuading large numbers of their fellow country- 
men of the truth of their claims. It was with confidence, then, 



522 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

that the Republican party, in the midst of an era of wonderful 

national prosperity, entered on the presidential campaign of 

1880. No President ever deserved a second term more than 

Hayes. But the shadow cast on his title in 1876, combined 

with his uncompromising independence of the leaders of the 

party, and his failure, through a certain aloofness of manner, to 

appeal to the popular imagination, made his nomination in 1880 

out of the question. General Grant had just returned from a 

world-circling tour in which he had been received with royal 

honors by the sovereigns of Europe and Asia. A branch of the 

Republican party, called the " stalwarts," ^ led by Senator Ros- 

coe Conkling of New York, boomed Grant for a third term, 

chiefly with the hope of reestablishing under the cover of his 

popularity the rule of the Republican machine, which had been 

somewhat damaged by President Hayes. Grant's chief rivals in 

the convention were Senator James G. Blaine of Maine and 

Hayes's able Secretary of the Treasury, John Shemian of Ohio. 

736. James After the convention had balloted thirty-five times without 

vtcfodous^ giving the necessary majority vote to either Grant or Blaine, 

over the Dem- ^^ Wisconsin delee^ation led a ''stampede" to General James 
ocratic "solid ^ ^ •; 

South " in the A. Garfield ^ of Ohio, who had been sent to the convention to 

1880 work in the interests of Sherman. Chester A. Arthur of New 

York, a " stalwart," was nominated for Vice President to ap- 
pease the Conkling faction. The Democrats nominated General 
Winfield S. Hancock, the hero of the batde of Gettysburg. 

Garfield was elected by 214 votes to 155, and at the same 
time the Republicans regained the majority in the House of 

1 The " stalwarts," in opposition to the reforming " half-breeds," stood for 
uncompromising partisan rule, for a high protective tariff, for distribution of 
oflfices as spoils of political victor)^, for the assessment of officeholders for party 
contributions, and for the continued use of federal troops to coerce the Southern 
states and of federal inspectors to guard the polling places. 

2 Garfield was one of the best examples of our self-made men of the West. 
He had worked his way up from the towpath to a college presidency, and then 
to a seat in the state senate of Ohio. He had distinguished himself for gallant 
conduct in the famous corps of General Thomas at Chickamauga. In the 
winter of 1863 he had been elected to the House of Representatives, where he 
served with great distinction until his promotion to the Presidency in x8So. 



Twenty Years of Republican Supremacy 523 



Representatives, which they had lost in 1874. It was the first 
presidential election since i860 in which all the states of the 
Union took part, with the opportunity of expressing freely their 
choice ; for even after the Civil War was over and the states 
of the secession were nominally restored to their places in the 
Union, the presence of federal troops at the polls in the recon- 
structed states made a fair election impossible (see p. 496, note). 
The South, embittered against the Republican party for its 
harsh policy of Reconstruction, cast a solid Democratic vote, 
— even though the candidate of that party was the victor of 

Gettysburg ; and for a quarter of a 
century thereafter the ''solid South" 
was found in the Democratic column 
at every presidential election.-^ 

The choice of Garfield was a 
bitter disappointment to the ma- 
chine politicians. Though a 



737. Garfield 
antagonizes 
the " stal- 
Strict warts " led by 
Conkling 
Republican, the new President elect 

belonged to that reform wing of the 
party which the " stalwarts " con- 
temptuously called " half-breeds." 
Even before his inauguration he 
showed such independence of the 
"stalwart" leaders in his selections for cabinet positions and high 
federal offices that the party was hopelessly split. At the ear- 
nest request of Grant, Conkling had taken the stump in the 
campaign and contributed not a little to Garfield's election. Yet 
Garfield utterly ignored him in his appointments to office. He 
made Blaine, Conkling's dearest enemy. Secretary of State ; he 
assigned only a minor cabinet office to the state of New York ; 
and for the important post of collector of the port of New York 




James A. Garfield 



he named an uncompromising enemy of Conkling and the ma- 
chine. Stung by this " ingratitude," Conkling and his colleague 

1 In 1904 and 1908 Roosevelt and Taft both received electoral votes and 
carried states south of Mason and Dixon's line. The Republicans hailed this as 
the breaking up of the "solid South." 



524 History of the Republic since the Civil Wa7 

from New York, Thomas C. Piatt, resigned their seats in the 
United States Senate.^ 

738. The Factional spirit ran high and culminated in a dastardly crime, 
of Garfield, A few weeks after the resignation of the New York senators, 
^^^ President Garfield, accompanied by Secretary Blaine, entered 

the Baltimore and Potomac station at Washington to take a train 
to visit his family on the New Jersey shore. Charles Guiteau, a 
" stalwart " fanatic, crept ~up to the President and fired a bullet 
into his back. He did it, he said, to rid the country of a 
"traitor" and seat the ''stalwart" Arthur in the presidential 
chair. After lingering through the hot weeks of summer in 
dreadful agony, President Garfield died at Elberon, New Jersey, 
A September 19, 1881. 

739. Dis- Guiteau's pistol shot roused the whole country to the dis- 
SThe'civi?*^ graceful state of the public service. Political offices were the 
service p^-j^^ q£ intriguing politicians and wirepullers. Crowds of 

anxious placemen thronged the capital for weeks after the in- 
auguration, pestering the President for appointments in post 
offices, customhouses, and federal courts. Republicans and 
Democrats brought against each other the charge of " insatiable 
lust for office," — and both were right. One politician, when 
taken to task for not working in his office, cynically replied, 
" Work 1 why, I worked to get here ! " " Voluntary contribu- 
tions," or assessments, equal to 2 per cent of their salary, 
were levied on officeholders for campaign expenses, and the 
funds so raised were used shamelessly to buy votes.'^ 

1 The quarrel between Conkling and Garfield led to a most dramatic scene, 
Conkling, accompanied by Piatt and Arthur, called on Garfield at his room in 
the Riggs House shortly after his arrival in Washington, and for two hours 
stormed up and down the floor, pouring out the vials of his sarcastic wrath upon 
the President elect, who sat unmoved on the edge of his bed. Neither Piatt nor 
Conkling was returned to the Senate by the legislature of New York. The latter 
retired from politics, and a few years later lost his life through exposure in the 
great blizzard which swept New York City in 1888. Piatt returned to the Senate 
in 1897, where he served two terms, being replaced by Elihu Root in 1909. 

2 Even Vice President Arthur, after the election of 1880, referred in a joking 
way to the large expenditure of the Republican campaign committee. The elec- 
tion had been won, he said, by a " liberal use of soap." 



Tzveiity Years of Republican Supremacy 525 

At the very close of the Civil War thoughtful men had 740. The 
attacked this corrupt " spoils system," which had prevailed comnfissiont 
since Jackson's day. For seven years in succession Congress- ^871-1875 
man Jenckes of Rhode Island introduced a bill into the House 
" for the regulation of the civil service,"^ until in March, 187 1, 
a law was passed authorizing the President to appoint a com- 
mission to ascertain the fitness of candidates for office in the 
federal civil service and prescribe rules for their conduct. The 
commission advocated what was later called by Theodore Roose- 
velt " the merit system," that is, the selection of candidates 
by competitive examination rather than their appointment for 
party services, on the sound principle that a man's political 
opinions have little to do with his capacity for a clerkship. The 
low tone of public morality prevailing during Grant's adminis- 
tration discouraged reform of the civil service, and in 1875 
Congress discontinued the commission by failing to make 
any appropriation for its labors. President Hayes encouraged 
the merit system wherever he could. During his administration 
civil service leagues were formed in over thirty states of the 
Union, and the movement resulted in the establishment of the 
National Civil Service League at Newport in 1880. 

Under pressure from this national league a bill was intro- 741. The 
duced into the Senate by George Pendleton of Ohio in 1882, o/^gsf ''^ ^""^ 
which was passed in both Houses of Congress by large majori- 
ties and signed by President Arthur in January, 1883. The 
Pendleton Act provided for the reestablishment of the Civil Serv- 
ice Commission, and for the extension of the " merit system " 
as far as the President saw fit. It forbade the assessment of 
federal servants for campaign purposes, or the discharge of a 
competent clerk on account of his political opinions. Under its 
wise provisions about 14,000 officials in the post office and 
customs departments were immediately protected against the 
partisan revenge of victorious political bosses. 

1 By the civil service is meant the great number of clerks and assistants in 
the executive department of the government. 



526 History of the Repiiblic since the Civil War 



742. The 
progress of 
civil service 
reform in the 
last genera- 
tion 



743. The 
" stalwart " 
Republicans 
alarmed for 
their suprem- 
acy, 1882-1883 



The influence of politicians who have been so corrupt as to pre- 
fer the triumph of their party to the good of the country, or so 
bigoted as to believe that the good of the country depended on 
the triumph of their party, has been from the first exerted 
against the extension of civil service reform. In Hayes's day 
they called it the " snivel service," and ridiculed its champions 
as " goody-goodies " who thought themselves holier than their 
political neighbors. '' Noisy, not numerous ; pharisaical, not 
practical; pretentious, not powerful," was James G. Blaine's 
rhetorical condemnation of the reformers. Still, the cause has 
progressed in the last generation, until now some 85,000 offices, 
or about three fourths of the minor places in the federal civil 
service, are classified under the rules of the commission, to be 
filled on the test of merit and held on tenure secure against the 
jealousies and animosities of political bosses. 

The passage of the Pendleton Act was a tardy and rather 
desperate concession to the reform idea on the part of the 
*' stalwart " Republicans. For ten years they had seen a reform 
movement going on in their ranks, and had met that move- 
ment with indifference or scorn. Their policy of keeping the 
negro vote in the Southern states by means of armed forces at 
the polling places had failed; their corrupt administration of 
high offices had been exposed ; their complicity in fraudulent 
land companies and railroad transactions had been detected ; 
their high tariff was enriching the few protected manufactures 
at the expense of the many consumers, and was piling up in the 
Treasury of the United States a surplus of money which ought 
to have been circulating in business among the people. The 
boom in trade which had followed the panic of 1873 was begin- 
ning to slacken in 188 1, and "hard times" came on. In the 
congressional elections of 1882 the Republican majority of 19 
in the House was changed to a Democratic majority of 82, and 
the Republican party, thoroughly alarmed, began to consider 
how it should save its supremacy of a quarter of a century in 
the approaching presidential election of 1884. 



Tiveiity Years of Republican Supremacy 527 



By far the most prominent man in the Republican party was 744. james 
James G. Blaine, whom we have already met as candidate for hig^ecordas 

the presidential nomination in 1876 and 1880. As Secretary of secretary of 
^ . ' ^ state in 1881 

State for a few months in Garfield's cabinet. Blaine had height- 
ened his immense popularity with that large portion of our 
population which loves a spectacular display of energy in its 
public servants. He had intervened in a quarrel between Peru 
and Chile with language which implied the right of the United 
States to settle the disputes of her 
weaker sister republics of South 
and Central America. He had 
negotiated (but failed to persuade 
the Senate to ratify) a number of 
commercial treaties with these re- 
publics on the principle of " reci- 
procity," or the admission into each 
country, free of duty, of goods which 
were not produced in that country. 
He had assumed a lofty tone toward 
Great Britain in a controversy over 
the control of a canal to be cut 
through the Isthmus of Panama. 
His foreign dispatches were written 

in the nervous, confident, assertive style of the editorial page 
of a popular journal rather than in the guarded, deliberative 
language of diplomacy. 

But in spite of his impetuous assertions of patriotism and 745. The 
his great personal '^ magnetism," the reproach of shady dealings opposition 
with Western railroads and land schemes, which had prevented 188^^^^°^'* 
hi^ nomination in 1876, still clung to his name. And as the 
time for the national convention of 1884 drew near, those 
same reformers whom he had sarcastically dubbed " the unco 
guid," ^ " Pharisaical, not practical," began the movement to 
prevent his nomination at Chicago. They were ridiculed in the 

1 A Scotch phrase meaning " goody-goody." 




James G. Blaine 



528 History of the Repicblic since the Civil War 

New York Sun as " Mugwumps " — an Indian name meaning 
" big chief " — : because they affected superiority to the rest of 
their party. When Blaine's great popularity secured him the 
nomination over his rivals, President Arthur and Senator Ed- 
munds of Vermont (the candidate of the New England reform- 
ers), the Mugwumps, or Independent Republicans, organized 
a league at New York under the leadership of George William 
Curtis, the chairman of the original Civil Service Commission 
of 187 1. They protested against the nomination of a man 
" wholly disqualified for the high office of President of the 
United States " by his alliance with the most unscrupulous men 
of the party and his stubborn opposition to all reform ; and 
they called upon the Democrats to nominate an honest, inde- 
pendent candidate for whom truly public-spirited citizens could 
conscientiously vote.^ 
746. Grover The Democrats responded to this invitation by nominating 
Democratic Grover Cleveland, governor of New York. Cleveland was the 
son of a poor Presbyterian minister. He had grown up in 
western New York, supporting himself as best he could by 
tending a country store, teaching in an asylum for the blind, 
and acting as clerk in a lawyer's office in Buffalo. Here he 
studied law, was admitted to the bar, and, entering local politics, 
served as assistant district attorney, then as sheriff of Erie 
County, and in 1881, in his forty-fifth year, was elected mayor 
of Buffalo on an independent ticket. His administration of the 
office was so honest, able, and courageous that it brought him 
the Democratic nomination for the governorship of New York 
the next year. He carried the state by the unprecedented plu- 
rality of 192,000 votes. In the governor's chair he showed 
the same fearless independence which had won him the name 
of the ''veto mayor" in Buffalo. He was, like Lincoln and 
Garfield, a " self-made man." 

1 Several influential Republican newspapers, like the New York Times and 
the Springfield Republican, advised voting for Cleveland. " The defeat of 
Blaine," wrote one, " will be the salvation of the Republican party." 



nominee 



Twenty Years of Rcpicblican Supi^emacy 529 

By nature and training he was the direct antithesis of his 747. cieve- 
rival for the presidential election. Blaine was brilliant, genial, Biatne"** 
daring, and unreliable ; Cleveland was deliberate, patient, plod- contrasted 
ding, but firm as a rock when he had once reached his decision. 
Blaine, after a college training and ten years' experience as 
teacher and journalist, had entered the Maine legislature, and 
from there had gone to the national Congress, where he served 
fourteen years in the House of Representatives (as its Speaker 
from 1869 to 1875) and four years in the Senate, whence he 
was called by Garfield in 1881 to the first place in the cabinet. 
Cleveland had had absolutely no experience in national affairs, 
had never been a member of a legislative body of any sort, and 
had only the political training obtained in the executive offices 
of sheriff, mayor, and governor. 

The platform on which Cleveland ran is perhaps the most 748. The 
scathing political document in our history. "The Republican pa*ignof^^™ 
party," it reads, " is an organization for enriching those who J?^4, and 
control its machinery. ... It has steadily decayed in moral char- election 
acter and political capacity. ... Its platform promises are now 
only a list of its past failures. . . . Honeycombed with corrup- 
tion, outbreaking exposures no longer shock its moral sense. . . . 
The frauds and jobbery which have been brought to light in 
every department of the government are sufficient to have 
called for a reform within the Republican party ; yet those in 
authority . . . have placed in nomination a ticket against which 
the independent portion of the party are in open revolt." The 
campaign was the most bitterly fought in all our history, and 
the most disgraceful. Being unable to revive the issues of the 
Civil War for a generation of voters who had grown up since 
the surrender at Appomattox, and having no ground for criticism 
of Cleveland's public record in the state of New York, the 
Republican campaign orators attacked the private life of the 
Democratic candidate, ransacking every page of it for occasion 
of slander or traces of scandal. The Democrats in turn revived 
the whole miserable story of Blaine's railroad bonds and the 



5 30 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



749. Signifi- 
cance of 
the party 
revolution 
of 1884 



famous Mulligan letters.-^ Cleveland was called a coward be- 
cause he did not go to the war ; Blaine was called " un- 
American " because his mother was a Roman Catholic. The 
entire campaign, as the Nation remarked, was conducted in a 
spirit and a language " worthy of the stairways of a tenement 
house." It was clear on election night that the result hung on 
the state of New York, but several days of intense excitement 
passed before it was definitely known that Cleveland had 
carried the state by the slim majority of 11 49 votes out of 
1,167,169.^ 

Cleveland's election was the first Democratic victory since 
the campaign of 1856. For the quarter of a century since the 
Confederate mortars had opened their fire on Fort Sumter the 
Republicans had held control of the executive branch of our 
government, with the tens of thousands of oflfices in its patron- 
age. For only one term of Congress during that period had 
the Republicans lost control of the Senate, and they had a 
majority in the House in all but four terms. This long tenure 
of power was the reward the country paid the Republican party 
for its services in preserving the Union and abolishing the curse 
of slavery. Those services were great, but the uses to which 
the reward was put were unworthy. Considerations of public 
welfare, even of common honesty, were set aside for part}^ ends. 

1 These were letters which Blaine had written to the railroad manipulators, 
and which he himself thought so damaging to his chances for nomination that 
he had "borrowed" them from Mulligan and refused to return them — though 
he later in a ver}^ dramatic scene read them to the House, " inviting the confi- 
dence of 44,000,000 of his fellow citizens." The sharp-tongued Conkling, being 
invited to take the stump for Blaine in 1SS4, replied, " Thank you, 1 don't engage 
in criminal practice." 

2 The vote throughout the country (except in the "solid South") was ver}' 
close, Cleveland receiving 4,874,986 to 4,851,981 for Blaine.- Many people believe 
that Blaine lost New York, and consequently the election, on account of a remark 
made near the end of the campaign by a certain Dr. Burchard at a meeting of 
the ministers of New York, which had been called to congratulate Blaine and 
wish him success. On that occasion Dr. Burchard referred to the Democratic 
party as the party of " Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion." The insulting phrase, 
which implied that Roman Catholics were in a class with drunkards, and that 
both were in sympathy with " rebels," was taken up as a campaign cry all over 
the land, and doubtless cost Blaine thousands of votes. 



Tzventy Years of Repnblican Siipreniacy 531 

Confident in their majorities, the Republican leaders defied the 
growing demand for reform in the conduct of the government 
offices. They sneered at the civil service rules. They tried, by 
waving the '' bloody shirt," to keep alive the savage desire to 
coerce the South. They hampered and hectored their " reform 
President," Hayes. They cynically reduced the tariff 3 per 
cent (by an act of 1883), when their owti expert commission 
recommended a reduction of 20 per cent. They refused to take 
warning by the gathering of the reform forces in 1872. In the 
opinion of half the country they had " stolen " the election of 
1876, and were generally accused of having "bought" the 
election of 1880. Consequently, in 1884, they were deposed 
from their long supremacy by the votes of the reformers in 
their own party, to whose entreaties and remonstrances they 
had turned a deaf ear for more than a decade. 

REFERENCES 

The New Industrial Age : Carroll D. Wright, Industrial Evolution 
of the United States, chaps, xiii, xiv, xxii, xxiii ; E. L. BoGART, Economic 
History of the United States, chaps, xx, xxii, xxv ; N. S. Shaler (ed.), The 
United States, Vol. I, chap, vii; Vol. II, chaps, i, ii, xii; E. E. Sparks, 
National Development (American Nation Series), chaps, i-v, xviii ; Hugh 
McCULLOCH, Men and Measures of a Half Century, chap, xxxiii ; 
D. A. Wells, Recetit Economic Changes, chap, ii ; Katharine Coman, 
Industrial History of the United States, chap. viii. 

The Republican Machine : Wright, chaps, xxiv-xxvi ; Bogart, chaps. 
xxiv, xxvii, xxviii ; Sparks, chaps, vii-ix ; A. B. Hart, American History 
told by Contemporaries, Vol. IV, Nos. 162, 163, 165, 168, 169; E. B. 
Andrews, The United States in our o'wn Time, chaps, ix-xiv; John 
Sherman, Recollections of Forty Years, chaps, xxii-xxvii, xxix-xxxvii ; 
Albert Shaw, Political Problems of American Development, chaps, vi- 
viii; D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States, chaps, xiv- 
xvii ; A. D. NoYES, Forty Years of American Finance, chaps, ii, iii ; John 
Mitchell, Organized Labor, chap, viii ; Woodrovv Wilson, History 
of the American People,'Vo\.\ , chap. ii. 

The Party Revolution of 1884 : Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 160, 161 ; Sparks, 
chaps, x-xii, xvi-xix ; Dewey, chap, xviii; Sherman, chaps, xl-xlvii; 
Andrews, chap, xvi; Edward Stanwood, History of the Presidency, 



532 History of the Republic siiice the Civil War 

chaps, xxvi, xxvii ; George W. Curtis, Orations and Addresses, Vol. II ; 
Carl R. Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage ; James Bryce, The 
Amei'ican Commomvealth, Vol. II, chap. Ixv ; Lives of Grant by Hamlin 
Garland, W. C. Church, and Adam Badeau ; of Blaine, by " Gail 
Hamilton " and Edward Stanwood ; of Garfield, by J. A. Gilmore. 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Homestead Acts : J. N. Larned, History for Ready Reference 
and Topical Reading, Vol. V, pp. 3463-3464; S. Sato, The Land Ques- 
tion in the United States {fohns Hopkins Univei'sity Studies, Vol. IV, 
pp. 411-427) ; Thomas Donaldson, The Public Domain, pp. 332-356; 
J. B. Sanborn, Some Political. Aspects of Homestead Legislation {American 
Historical Review, Vol. VI, pp. 19-37) ; A. B. Hart, The Land Policy 
of the United States (in Essays on Practical Government). 

2. The " Crime of 1873" : J. L. Laughlin, History of Bimetallism in 
the United States, pp. 92-105 ; D. K. Watson, History of American Coin- 
age, pp. 135-160; Horace White, Money and Banking, pp. 213-223; 
J. T. Cleary, The Crime of i8yj {Sound Currency, Vol. Ill, No. 13); 
Sherman, pp. 459-470; Dewey, pp. 403-410. 

3. The Custer Massacre: Andrews, pp. 169-193; F. Whittaker, 
Complete Life of George A. Custer, Book VIII, chaps, iv-v; Elizabeth 
B. Custer, General Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn. 

4. The Granger Movement: Andrews, pp. 281-284; A. T. Hadley, 
Raihvad TranspoHation, its History and Lazvs, pp. 129-139; E. W. 
'M.A.WT\'ii,Histojyofthe Grange Movement ; C. F. Adams, Jr., The Granger 
Movement {North American Review, Vol. CXX, pp. 394-410); C. W. 
Preisen, Outco77ie of the Granger Movement {Popular Science Monthly, 
Vol. XXXII, pp. 201-214). 

5. Civil Service Reform : Fish, pp. 209-245 ; Andrews, pp. 230-235, 
336-342 ; E. BiE K. FoLTZ, The Federal Civil Service, pp. 38-82 ; 
Sparks, pp. 182-201 ; Hart, Vol. IV, No. 199 ; Dorman B. Eaton 
(articles in J. J. Lalor's Cyclopcedia of Political Science, Vol. I, pp. 153, 
472, 478 ; Vol. II, p. 640 ; Vol. Ill, pp. 19, 139, 565, 782, 895). 

6. The Movement for a Third Term for Grant : Sparks, pp. 165-172 ; 
Stanwood, ya;;z^j- G. Blaine, pp. 225-231; Andrews, pp. 307-312; 
Sherman, pp. 766-774; Badeau, Grant in Peace, pp. 3i9ff. ; series of 
articles for and against a third term, by G. S. Boutwell, J. S. Black, 
E. W. Slaughter, and Timothy Howe {North American Review^ 
Vol. CXXX, pp. 116, 197, 224, 370). 



CHAPTER XIX 'HV 

THE CLEVELAND DEMOCRACY * 

A People's President 

In a book of essays called '' Presidential Problems," written 750. cieve- 
in 1904, some years after his retirement from public life, Mr. ©Mhe ^ ^* 
Cleveland spoke of the presidency as ** preeminently the people's ^gcutive 
office." His administration of that office during the two terms 
1885-1889 and 1893-1897 proved the sincerity of his re- 
mark, for he acted always as the head of the nation, even when 
such action threatened to cost him the leadership of his party. 
He did not believe that the people, in choosing a President, sim- 
ply designated a man to sit at his desk in the White House and 
sign the bills which Congress passed up to him, and make the 
appointments to office which the managers of the party dic- 
tated to him. He belonged to the class of Presidents who have 
interpreted " leading " their party to mean educating their 
party. Cleveland's exalted view of the independence and re- 
sponsibility of the President was partly a result of his direct- 
ness and decision of character, and partly due to the fact that 
his political career had been confined entirely to the executive 
branch of service. 

It was inevitable that President Cleveland should come into 751. cieve- 
conflict with Congress. The Democratic House which had been ^ash with 
chosen in the election of 1884 expected him to sweep the Re- Congress 
publicans out of all the offices which they had held for a quarter 
of a century ; while the Republican Senate, whose consent was 
necessary for all the President's appointments, reminded him 
that the Mugwump vote, which had elected him, had been cast 
by Republicans who believed him an unpartisan reformer of 

533 



534 Histojy of the Republic since the Civil War 

the tariff and the civil service. When the President chose two 
. cabinet members ^ from states of the lower South, and divided 
the chief foreign missions and consulships between the North 
and the South, as a pledge of the cessation of sectional bitter- 
ness, he was assailed for intrusting the offices of government 
to " ex-Confederate brigadier generals." When his sense of 
justice led him to remove several federal officers, especially 
postmasters, who had used their office unblushingly for cam- 
paign purposes, he was accused of going back on his public 
profession of devotion to the principles of civil service reform.^ 
752. The The Senate made a direct issue with the President early in 
office^Act i^S^ o"^^^ ^^ removal of District Attorney Dustin of Alabama. 



December, 



Smb^er Invoking the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 (p. 490), the Senate 
refused to confirm the nomination of Dustin's successor, and 
called on the President, through Attorney-General Garland, for 
the papers relating to the dismissal. Cleveland, believing that 
the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, replied that his 
power of removal was absolute, refused to furnish the papers, 
and added that " no threat of the Senate was sufficient to dis- 
courage or deter" him from following the course which he 
believed led to " government for the people." A bitter fight 
followed in the Senate, during which Cleveland was roundly 
abused and his Attorney-General formally censured. But the 
President won, and had the satisfaction before the year closed 
of seeing the unjust Tenure of Office Act repealed by Congress 
(December 17, 1886). 

1 These were L. Q. C. Lamar of Mississippi, Secretary of the Interior, and 
Augustus H. Garland of Arkansas, Attorney-General. Thomas F. Bayard, Cleve- 
land's first Secretary of State, also came from south of Mason and Dixon's line, 
from the loyal slave state of Delaware. 

2 These pledges are contained in Cleveland's letter of acceptance of the Dem- 
ocratic nomination for the presidency (August, 1884) ; also in a private letter to 
George William Curtis a few months later. The party pressure brought to bear 
on Cleveland was evidently greater than he could resist, for within two years all 
the Republican federal sur\'eyors, naval officers, and territorial governors had 
been removed, and about 90 per cent of the collectors of customs, the internal 
revenue collectors, the district attorneys, and the territorial judges. Practically 
all the foreign ministers were changed also. 




GROVEK CLEVELAND 



TJie Cleveland Democracy 535 

The independent position of the executive was still further 753. The 
strengthened in the same year (1886) by the passage of the succession 
Presidential Succession Act. According to the law hitherto ex- ^^^ °* ^^^^ 
isting, in the event of the death or disability of both the Presi- 
dent and the Vice President the succession went to the president 
pro tempore of the Senate and then to the Speaker of the House. 
But it frequently happened that one, or even both, of these men 
belonged to the opposite party from the President's. It seemed 
unjust that the office of President should not, in spite of all ac- 
cidents, remain in the hands of the party successful at the polls. 
Vice President Hendricks had died in November, 1885, and the 
Senate had chosen John Sherman as president /r^ tempore^ thus 
putting an ardent Republican in line for the presidency in case 
of Cleveland's death or disability. The Presidential Succession 
Act remedied this injustice by making the cabinet officers (who 
were all, of course, of the President's own party) the heirs to 
the presidency in the order of the creation of their departments, 
beginning with the Secretary of State. 

Important as Cleveland regarded his contest for the restora- 754. The 
tion of the independence and dignity of the executive office, — [^e sua>ius. 
so completely overshadowed by Congress since the Civil War, — 
he felt that his chief duty was the protection of the public purse 
by the strictest administration of the government's finances. The 
unexampled prosperity of our country after the panic of 1873 
had created so much wealth at home, and stimulated such a vol- 
ume of foreign trade, that the tariff duties and revenue taxes 
brought into the Treasury every year far more than enough 
money to run the government. From $102,000,000 in 1870 the 
surplus grew to $145,000,000 in 1882, and in the three years 
following the government rolled up the huge balance of $446,- 
000,000. This large surplus was an evil in itself because it 
withdrew millions of dollars from the channels of business to lie 
idle in the vaults of the Treasury ; and it was also the proof of 
a greater evil still, the excessive taxation of the people. Now 
the accumulation of a surplus could be remedied in either of two 



5 3^ History of the Republic since the Civil War 

ways, — the government might increase its expenses or it might 
decrease its revenues. Obviously, only the latter way would 
lessen the burden of taxation. 

755. Why It would seem as if the most natural thing for the govern- 
ment did not ment to do with its surplus would be to pay off its debts, as an 
phis^to^par off honest man would do. But the matter was not so simple as 

the national an individual transaction would be. The government's debt was 

debt ^ 

largely in the shape of bonds, which were held as safe invest- 
ments by people at home and abroad, and which, on account of 
our general prosperity, were selling at a high figure. For the 
government to step into the market and buy back its own 
bonds from the public at a premium, would not only mean 
considerable loss to the Treasury, but would deprive the public 
of one of its best forms of investment as well. Besides, as the 
bonds were the security on which the notes of the national 
banks were issued (p. 453, note), to call in and cancel the bonds 
would mean to reduce the circulation of bank notes, just at a 
time, too, when more currency was needed for the volume of 
the country's trade. ^ 

756. Various Besides extinguishing the national debt there were other ways 
reducing in which the surplus might be spent. Congress might appropri- 
the surplus ^^^ large sums for the improvement of rivers and harbors, for 

coast defenses and a new navy, for education in the South, or 
increased pensions to veterans of the Civil War. But this idea 
of the public Treasury as a bountiful source of wealth for en- 
couraging the development of our country — the old " Ameri- 
can system " of Henry Clay and the Whigs — was opposed to 
all the tradition and practice of the Democratic party. Cleveland 
phrased the matter neatly in one of his epigrams, ^^^The people 
must support the government, but the government must not 
support the people." 

1 In spite of these considerations the government bought bonds to the value 
of $50,000,000 in 1886, |ii25,ooo,ooo in 1887, and $130,000,000 in 1888. The bank- 
note circulation was reduced $126,000,000 between 1886 and 1890. This lack of 
notes, however, was largely remedied in 1886 by the issue of silver certificates by 
the Treasury in denominations of $1, $2, and $5. 



The Clevelmtd Democracy 537 

The logical and only remedy, then, for the disposal of the sur- 757. Reduc- 
plus, the remedy which would both relieve the people of undue tar^ff^the^^ 
taxation and remove from Congress the temptation to squander ^^^^ remedy 
the people's money, was the reduction of the tariff. To this end 
Cleveland devoted the chief energies of his administration. He 
began the attack on the protective tariff in his first annual mes- 
sage to Congress (December, 1885), but the House refused by 
a vote of 154 to 149 to consider any bill for revision. In De- 
cember, 1886, the President returned to the attack, calling the 
tariff a " ruthless extortion " of the people's money ; and the 
next year he so far departed from precedent as to devote his 
e7itire annual message (December, 1887) to the tariff situation. 
He declared that it was not a time for the nice discussion of 
theories of free trade and protection. It might, or might not, 
be true that a protective tariff made American wages higher, 
kept our money in our own country, built up a market for 
American manufactures, and made us independent of foreign 
nations for the necessities of life. He did not advocate free 
trade. He only insisted that the people were being overtaxed 
by a tariff that was " vicious, illegal, and inequitable," and that 
the surplus must be reduced at once. " It is a condition that 
confronts us, and not a theory," he wrote. 

By dint of much persuasion Cleveland got the House to 758. The 

pass a tariff bill, framed by Roger Q. Mills of Texas, reducing Cleveland's 

the duties by some 7 or 8 per cent. But the Republican Sen- policy of 

J I ^ ^ tariff reduc- 

ate refused to agree, and the rates remained as they were tion 

under President Arthur. Cleveland had spent his entire term 
fighting for a reduction of the tariff, and lost. His daring mes- 
sage of 1887, written in spite of the protests of the manufac- 
turing interests in the Democratic party, was taken up by the 
Republican campaign orators and pamphleteers and attacked as 
a free-trade document which showed hostility to the prosperity 
of American industry and indifference to the welfare of the 
American wage earner. The presidential campaign of 1888 
was waged entirely on the issue of the tariff, in the very days 



538 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



759. The 
high tariff 
encouraged 
by the trusts 



760. The 
Knights of 
Labor and 
their demands 



when the Mills Bill was before Congress. The issue of that 
campaign in the defeat of Cleveland seemed to fix the policy 
of protection as an unalterable principle of American politics.^ 
In the four revisions of the tariff made previous to the Under- 
wood Bill of 1 9 1 3 (the McKinley Bill of 1 890, the Wilson-Gorman 
Bill of 1894, the Dingley Bill of 1897, ^^^^ ^^^ Payne- Aldrich 
Bill of 1909) the duties were kept at figures averaging nearly 
50 per cent, -— the highest duties in our history. 

Had Cleveland's fight for the reduction of the tariff come 
ten years earlier, it would have had a better chance for success. 
But in the decade which had followed the financial panic of 
1873 a process had been going on which gave great strength 
to the protectionist policy. This was the consolidation of busi- 
ness interests into large corporations, or ^' trusts." ^ By the end 
of Cleveland's first administration the great " coal roads " of 
Pennsylvania (the Erie, the Lehigh Valley, the Pennsylvania, 
the Lackawanna), had got control of practically all the anthracite- 
coal beds in the country. The lumber men, the whisky distil- 
lers, the oil, lead, and sugar refiners, the rope makers, the iron 
smelters, with many other '' captains of industry," were consoli- 
dated into great trusts. Their wealth gave them immense influ- 
ence in Congress, and this influence was exerted steadily against 
the reduction of tariff duties, which shielded them from foreign 
competition. 

The consolidation of capital in great corporations was attended 
in the same epoch by combinations of laborers for the secur- 
ing of adequate wages, a fair working day, humane treatment in 

1 The Republican platform of 1888 says, " We favor the entire repeal of 
internal taxes [i.e. revenue on tobacco, liquors, patent medicines, etc.] rather 
than the surrender of any part of our protective system." 

2 The " trust " (or board of trustees) was originally a body of men holding in 
trust the certificates of stock of various companies included in a combine. This 
form of consolidation was declared illegal in the eighties, but the great industrial 
and transportation companies still continued, through the purchase of the ma- 
jority of the stock of the smaller companies, or through management of them 
by identical boards of directors, to control business and prices as before. The 
name " trust " is commonly applied to any combination large and wealthy enough 
to tend to monopolize the production and distribution of any commodity. 



The Clevelmid Democracy 5 39 

case of sickness or disability, and protection against unmerited 
discharge. The Knights of Labor, organized by the garment 
cutters of Philadelphia in 1869, had grown by 1886 to a national 
organization with over 700,000 members. The object of the 
organization was to unite the workers of America into a great 
brotherhood whose motto was, " The injury of one is the con- 
cern of all." It declared in its preamble that '' the alarming 
development and aggression of great capitalists and corpora- 
tions, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization 
and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses." It demanded 
for the workers " full enjoyment of the wealth they create and 
sufficient leisure to develop their intellectual, moral, and social 
faculties, to share in the gains and honors of advancing civiliza- 
tion." For the accomplishment of these ends the order made 
demands on state and national governments for laws guaran- 
teeing the health and safety of workers in mines and factories, 
prohibiting the employment of children, enforcing arbitration 
of disputes between capital and labor, laying a graduated tax 
on incomes, forbidding the importation of foreign labor or the 
employment of convict labor, and securing the " nationalizing " 
(i.e. the purchase by the government) of the telegraphs, the 
telephones, and the railroads.-^ 

The strife between capital and labor was very bitter in Cleve- 761. Cleve- 
land's first term. Over 500 labor disputes, chiefly over wages auempts to 

and hours of work, were reported in the early months of 1886 : remedy the 

'^ ■' labor troubles 

and the number of strikes for that year was double the number 

of any previous year.^ President Cleveland was greatly con- 
cerned over these labor troubles. In the spring- of 1886 he 

1 The labor movement became prominent in politics and literature in the year 
1886, when Henry George, the author of " Progress and Poverty " and an advocate 
of the "single tax" (a tax on land only and not on industry or commerce), ran 
for mayor of New York on the labor platform. A widely read novel of Edward 
Bellamy, entitled " Looking Backward," pictured the Utopian state of society in 
the year 2000, when complete cooperation should have taken the place of com- 
petition and wage struggles. 

2 The number of strikes tabulated by Adams and Sumner, " Tabor Problems " 
(p. 180), is as follows: 1884,485; 1885,695; 1886,1572; 1887,1505; 1888,946. The 
most serious of the strikes of 1886 culminated in a deed of horror. An open-air 



540 Histoiy of the Republic since the Civil War 

sent to Congress a special message on the subject, — the first 
presidential message on labor in our history. The House had 
already appointed a standing committee on labor and created 
(1884) a national Bureau of Labor in the Department of the In- 
terior for collecting statistics on the condition of wage earners. 
Cleveland now recommended the creation of a national commis- 
sion of labor, to consist of three persons who should have power 
to hear and settle controversies between capital and labor. Con- 
gress failed to adopt this important recommendation, but several 
of the states (including Massachusetts and New York) passed 
laws providing for the settlement of labor disputes by arbitration. 
762. The The most serious trouble was with the railroads. We have 

railroads already seen in the Granger movement the hostility of the 

Western farmers to the railroads in the early seventies (p. 513). 
As the great wheat and corn fields, the ranches, and the mines 
west of the Mississippi were developed, and the cities of the 
Middle West grew into busy manufacturing and distributing 
centers, the problem of freight transportation became of in- 
creasing importance. The railways, except for some slight com- 
petition on the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, had a monopoly 
of this transportation, and their charges were virtually a tax on 
the producer and the manufacturer, — a tax which the roads 
could regulate at their own good pleasure. Now in matters of 
taxation the public objects both to excessive rates and to a differ- 
ence in rates for different persons, — to extortion and to discrim- 
ination. It felt that the railroads were guilty of the former offense, 
and knew that they were guilty of the latter. It saw their 
power and wealth increasing with fabulous rapidity.^ It saw 

meeting in Haymarket Square, Chicago, called by anarchists to protest against 
the forcible repression of the strike in the McCormick Reaper Works, and to de- 
mand an eight-hour day, was ordered by the police to disperse. When the police 
charged, a dynamite bomb was thrown into the midst of the squad, instantly kill- 
ing seven men and wounding sixty more. With intrepid step the police closed 
their ranks and dispersed the meeting. The ringleaders of the anarchists were 
arrested, and the next year four of them were hanged. 

1 The railroad mileage doubled in the decade 1S70-1880, growing from 53,000 
to 100,000 miles. During the years 1879-1884 the mileage increased four times 
as fast as the population of the United States. 



The Cleveland Democracy 54 1 

their influence extending into state legislatures and the national 
Congress. It saw them allying themselves with trusts, like the 
Standard Oil Company, to crush out competition and ruin the 
small producer. It saw them disturbing the natural spread of 
industry by offering low rates to one locality and charging high 
rates to another. It saw them cutting their rates on through 
hauls from Chicago or St. Louis to New York, where there was 
competition with other trunk lines, and making up the loss by 
charging high freights to shippers who depended on one road 
alone for getting their products to the markets. 

In all this the public judged the railroads to be guilty of gross 
injustice and ingratitude. They had been granted charters by the 
states as public benefactors ; they had been the recipients of 
large grants of public lands ; they had been accorded privileges 
of tax exemption ; they had been allowed to take private prop- 
erty when necessary for the construction of their lines ; they 
had had their bonds guaranteed by the state legislatures. Their 
obvious duty in return for these favors was to give the public 
the best possible service consistent with a fair interest on the 
actual capital invested in their construction and operation. 

These great railroad corporations, or " transportation trusts," 763. The 
like the oil and lumber and whisky trusts, were chartered by Lawf and 
the state legislatures. The national government had no specific ^Jgg^^''^^^ 
power given it by the Constitution to deal with the business 
interests of the country, although it had, during its period of 
great authority at the time of the Civil War, created a system 
of national banks. Some of the state legislatures, responding 
to the outcry against the railroads, passed so-called Granger 
Laws, holding the roads to fair and equitable freight charges. 
But when a decision in the United States court (Wabash 
Railroad vs. the State of Illinois) ruled in 1886 that no state 
law could apply to commerce carried on between two or more 
states, the Granger Laws were seen to be ridiculously ineffec- 
tive, for no railroad of any importance had its traffic confined 
to a single state. 



542 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

764. The Now the Constitution (Article I, Sect. 8, clause 3) gives Con- 
Commerce gress power '' to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and 
Act, 1887 amo7ig the several states. ^^ By virtue of this power Congress passed 

the famous Interstate Commerce Act (or Cullom Act) in Feb- 
ruary, 1887. The act provided for a commission of five men, 
with power to investigate the books of railroads doing inter- 
state business and to call the managers of the roads to hearings. 
It forbade any discrimination in rates, and required the roads to 
file their tariffs for public inspection. It prohibited the ^^ pooling" 
of traffic ^ and the charging of a higher rate on a short haul than 
on a long haul. The commission had no power of jurisdiction, 
but only of investigation ; that is, each case against a railroad 
had to be tried in a federal court. The influence of the railroads 
with the courts and the skill of shrewd corporation lawyers in 
'^ interpreting " the rather vague language of the statute reduced 
the Interstate Commerce Act to a " useless piece of legislation " 
in the opinion of Justice Harlan of the Supreme Court. 

765. Effect Yet, for all its failure to control the railroads adequately, the 
on future ^ct was of great importance. It taught the people that our 
legislation government could and would exert its power in the sphere of 

private industries. It made the railroads open their books and 
publish their rates ; ^ and this wholesome prescription of pub- 
licity sobered many a reckless board of directors. Most impor- 
tant of all, it created a precedent for the government regulation 
of railroads and other corporations, and made the more effective 
legislation that has followed (in the Elkins Bill of 1903,^ the 
Hepburn Bill of 1906,* and the Taft administration measures 

1 By " pooling " is meant dividing the traffic by amicable agreement among the 
various roads which would naturally compete for it. The total profits are then 
put into a common treasury and divided according to the business assigned to 
each road. It is a device to kill competition between the roads. 

2 During 18S7 and 1S88 about 270,000 freight tariffs were filed. At one time 
they were received by the commission at the rate of 500 a day. 

3 Prohibiting the giving of rebates from the rates of the published tariffs, and 
punishing shippers for accepting rebates as well as the railroads for giving them. 

4 Giving the commission certain powers of control over the railroads in making 
rates. 



The Cleveland Democracy 543 

of 1910^), seem like the natural extension of a policy already 
firmly established by the government. 

President Cleveland came out of the trying circumstances 766. cieve- 
of his first administration indisputably the leading man of the Ji^oV^is^s^'^' 
Democratic party. Even his enemies in the party were obliged 
to concede his '' unflinching integrity and robust common 
sense." He had shown a generation which had grown up with- 
out seeing a Democrat in the presidential chair that the word 
was not a synonym for " rebel," " free trader," " demagogue," 
or " horse thief." He was renominated by acclamation in the 
Democratic national convention held at St. Louis in June, 
1888. Blaine, his rival in 1884, was absent in Europe on an 
extended trip. He would undoubtedly have been the choice 
of the Republican convention at Chicago had he not written 
from Florence, and again cabled from Paris, his unconditional 
refusal to take the nomination. The convention, passing over 
the more prominent candidate, John Sherman, selected, at 
Blaine's suggestion," General Benjamin Harrison, United States 
senator from Indiana, an able lawyer and an honored veteran 
of the Civil War, the grandson of the old Whig hero and Presi- 
dent, William Henry Harrison. 

The campaign was waged almost entirely on the tariff issue. 767. why 
It had none of the slanderous, vituperative character of the the^eiection 
campaign of 1884, although money was freely spent to win the 
doubtful states of Indiana, Illinois, and New York. Cleveland's 

1 Enlarging the commission's powers in rate making, requiring careful classi- 
fications of freight, prohibiting the roads from changing rates approved by the 
commission, including telegraphs, telephones, and cable sen'ice under the com- 
mission's jurisdiction, allowing it to suspend a freight rate for ten months even 
without complaint by a shipper, and creating a special court of commerce to hear 
appeals from the decision of the commission. This thorough bill of 19 lo con- 
tained originally provisions to let the commission supervise the issues of rail- 
road stocks and bonds, and to make a valuation of the railroad as a basis for the 
determination of fair freight rates ; hik these provisions failed of adoption. 

2 After the fifth ballot had been cast a cable message was sent by the conven- 
tion leaders to Blaine, who was visiting Andrew Carnegie at his country seat, Skibo 
Castle, in Scotland, asking him to change his mind and accept the nomination. 
The answer came : ''Too late. Blaine immovable. Take Harrison and Phelps." 
The convention took Harrison and Morton. 



544 History of tJie Republic since the Civil War 

famous tariff message of 1887 was denounced as a free-trade 
document by Republican orators, and the benefits of a pro- 
tective tariff were lauded in a long cablegram from Blaine, con- 
gratulating the American workman on his advantages over 
his European brother. Cleveland lost the support of the 
veterans of the Civil War by his veto of a great number of 
pension bills, ^ and by his executive order directing that the 
Confederate flags stored in the War Building at Washington be 
restored to the Southern states from whose regiments they had 
been captured.^ And, finally, in the pivotal state of New York, 
David B. Hill, an unscrupulous politician and a bitter enemy 
of the President, arranged a " deal " with the Republicans by 
which the anti-Cleveland men should give Harrison presidential 
votes in return for gubernatorial votes for Hill. The " Harrison 
and Hill ticket" won. The state went Republican by 13,000 
in a total of 1,300,000 votes, giving Harrison the presidency. 
Cleveland's popular vote throughout the country, however, ex- 
ceeded Harrison's by over 100,000 — more than double the 
popular plurality of any successful presidential candidate since 
1872. Mr. Cleveland retired to private life with this splendid 
indorsement of his policies by his fellow citizens. 

A Billion-Dollar Country 

768. The Re- Although the election of 1888 gave the Republicans only a 
actior°i889- iiarrow majority in Congress, and actually registered a popular 
1890 triumph for Cleveland, the Republicans proceeded as though 

1 In 1885 nearly three times as many persons were receiving pensions from 
the government as at the close of the Civil War. In 1866 our pension charge 
was ^15,000,000 ; by 1885 it had grown to ^^65,000,000. Pensions were obtained by 
swindling agents on absurd claims. Hundreds of pension bills were passed at a 
single sitting of the Senate. Cleveland insisted on investigating each case thor- 
oughly, and vetoed some 100 out of the 747 pension bills passed in his first term. 
Only one was passed over his veto. ^ 

2 This so-called " Rebel Flag Order " was a blunder on the part of the Presi- 
dent. He had no authority to restore the flags, which were national property ; and 
he revoked the order when he saw his mistake. In 1905 a Republican Congress 
passed a bill restoring the " rebel flags " to their states, and the bill was signed 
by a Republican President. 



Tlie Cleveland Democracy 



545 



they had been swept into office by a tidal wave like Jackson's 
victory of 1828 or the Whig revolution of 1840. They 
reversed the entire policy of the Cleveland administration, advo- 
cating lavish expenditures in the place of public economy, re- 
newed coercion of the South instead of conciliation, increase in 
tariff rates rather than reduction, a bold, aggressive foreign 
policy to replace the cautious diplomacy carried on by Cleveland's 
State Department. 

The new President was a complete contrast to his prede- 769. Presi- 
TT . -IT ^ • J X. .-u ^eiit Harrison 

cessor. He was a party man, wilhng to receive and respect the ^nd the Re- 
warning sent him just after his Jjfgjg^^ 
election by the leader of the Sen- 
ate, John Sherman : " The Presi- 
dent should have no policy distinct 
from that qf his party, and this 
is better represented in Congress 
than in the executive." Courtesy 
required that Harrison should 
offer the highest position in his 
patronage to the man who had 
made him the choice of the party. 
Blaine accepted the portfolio of 
State, and throughout the admin- 
istration completely overshadowed 
his nominal chief in the White 
House. The Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed of Maine, 
was also a masterful, conspicuous figure in the administration. 
He ran the House in such dictatorial fashion that he was nick- 
named '' Czar Reed." The Republican majority was slim, and 
the Democrats could prevent a quorum and the transaction 
of business by refusing to answer to the roll call. Speaker 
Reed put through a set of rules which authorized him to count 
as " present " all members on the floor of the House ; and he 
extended his authority even to the corridors, the cloakroom, 
and the barber's shop. He refused to recognize speakers or put 




Benjamin Harrison 



546 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



770. Expend- 
itures of Con- 
gress on 
public works 
and pensions 



motions whose evident intent was to delay the business of the 
House. In a word, he made Congress a perfect machine for 
the dispatch of the Republican program, and elevated the 
Speaker to a position of autocratic power which he held unim- 
paired up to the year 1910.-^ Thus in both branches of Congress 
and in the cabinet the President was dwarfed by men whose 
talents, force, and popularity far exceeded his own. 

The Republican Congress of 1889-189 1, approving the re- 
mark of General Grant's son that " a surplus is easier to handle 
than a deficit," began immediately to reduce the surplus by 
generous appropriations. It increased the number of steel ves- 
sels in the navy from three vessels in 1889 to twenty-two in 
1893, putting the United States among the half-dozen greatest 
naval powers of the world. It spent large sums on coast de- 
fenses, lighthouses, and harbors. It repaid the state treasuries 
some $15,000,000 of the direct taxes levied at the beginning of 
the Civil War. But its chief extravagance was in the matter 
of pensions. During the campaign, Harrison, referring to Cleve- 
land's careful examination of all applications for pensions, re- 
marked that it was " no time to be weighing the claims of the 
old soldiers with an apothecary's scales." Congress now pro- 
ceeded to grant them pensions without weighing their claims 
at all. The raid on the Treasury was uninterrupted. The dis- 
bursements for pensions rose during Harrison's term from 
$88,000,000 to $159,000,000 annually, — a sum greater than 
the cost of the army and navy of the United States in any 
year of peace during the nineteenth century.^ 

1 The immense power of the Speaker consisted in the fact that he appointed all 
the committees of the House, that as presiding officer he could recognize, or not, 
as he pleased, the member who rose to speak, and that he was ex officio on the Rules 
Committee, which arranges the whole calendar of the House, and can keep any 
bill from " coming up " as long as it chooses to. In the spring of 1910 a body 
of Republican insurgents, with the help of Democratic votes, passed a resolution 
depriving the Speaker (Joseph G. Cannon) of some of his power. For example, 
he was " deposed " from the Rules Committee, which was hereafter to be enlarged 
to fifteen members and elected by the House. 

2 " Corporal " Tanner, commissioner of pensions appointed by President 
Harrison, is said to have remarked on taking office, " God help the surplus I " 



TJie Clevelajid Democracy 547 

Altogether the appropriations of Harrison's first Congress 771. our 
reached the $1,000,000,000 mark. When the Democrats cried coun*Sy!°"^'^ 
out at the extravagance of a billion-dollar Congress, Speaker '^j^® census 
Reed quietly replied that it was " a billion-dollar country." In 
fact the eleventh census (1890), compiled in 25 volumes, re- 
vealed the astonishing prosperity of the United States at the end 
of the first century of its existence under the Constitution.^ 
Our population was 62,500,000 and our wealth $65,000,000,- 
000. Especially noticeable was the concentration of our people 
in cities. The number of cities of over 8000 inhabitants doubled 
in the decade 1 880-1 890, and by the latter year such cities 
contained fully one half the population of New England, New 
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Advance in civilization 
tends to encourage greater centralization of government, and 
with the extension of the government's activities brings an 
increasing ratio of the expense of government to population. 
In Washington's day our country of 5,000,000 inhabitants, 
largely of the farming class, could be run for $11,000,000 a 
year, a litde over two dollars a head. The estimated expenses 
for the year 19 10 (exclusive of the Post Office Department) 
were $735,000,000, or about eight dollars a head for a popula- 
tion of over 90,000,000. A billion dollars, therefore, for the two 
years 1889-1891, when our population was 62,500,000, meant 
almost exactly the per capita expense of our country at the present 
day — certainly an extravagance for twenty years ago. 

The census showed also that the South was recovering from 772. progress 
the ravages of the Civil War and the Reconstruction period, 
and was beginning that marvelous career of industrial pros- 
perity which has been the feature of our growth in the present 

Six months of his extravagance was all the Republican Congress could stand. 
Although twenty-five years had passed since the close of the war a Dependent 
Pension Bill gave from ^6 to ^12 a month to all men who had served go days 
in the war, whether or not their inability to earn their support was due to injuries 
received in the service. 

1 A few weeks after his inauguration Mr. Harrison had been the central figure 
in an imposing pageant in New York City in celebration of the one hundredth 
anniversary of the inauguration of George Washington (April 30, 1789). 



548 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

generation. Encouraged by Northern capital, the South was 
building mills for spinning her own cotton, improving her 
transportation lines by land and water, exploiting the splendid 
forests of the Carolinas and Georgia, and opening the rich 
deposits of coal and iron which stretched in an unbroken line 
of 300 miles through the highlands from West Virginia to 
Alabama. By 1890 the latter state ranked third in the Union 




The Locks in the " Soo " 

The Sault Sainte Marie Canal at the outlet of Lake Superior, through which over 
^40,000,000 worth of merchandise passes annually 



773. New 
states in the 
Northwest, 
1889-1890 



in the production of iron, and the South as a whole was produc- 
ing more coal and iron than the whole country had mined 
twenty years earlier. 

In the Far Northwest the tier of territories extending from 
Minnesota to Oregon were filling rapidly with farmers, ranch- 
men, lumbermen, and miners. The Indian frontier had largely 
disappeared. The reservations were an obstacle to the Pacific 
railroads, and had to go. The government tried to break up the 
tribal organization of the Indians by the Dawes Bill of 1887, 



The Cleveland Denioefacy 549 

which granted each head of an Indian family 160 acres of land 
and American citizenship. The next year some 15,000 Indian 
youths were in government schools, where it was hoped that 
they would be weaned by the industry and science of the white 
man from the shiftless, roaming, cruel life of the tribe. With the 
stubborn but vain resistance of the Sioux of Dakota, in 1890, 
to the advancing tide of civilization our great Indian wars were 
at an end. By that date the territories of the Northwest had 
already become states of the Uniop. On November 2, 1889, 
President Harrison proclaimed the ^idmission of North and South 
Dakota, Montana, and Washington, and the next year Idaho and 
Wyoming were added. For the first time in our history an 
unbroken tier of states reached from the Atlantic to the Pacific.-^ 

Politics figured in the admission to. statehood of the six great 
territories of the Northwest. The ^Republicans counted on a 
majority in all of them except Montana, as they had been 
largely settled by pioneers from the stanch Republican states of 
Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. As states they were 
expected to contribute ten senators and five or six repre- 
sentatives to the slim Republican majority in Congress, besides 
adding about fifteen electoral votes to the Republican column 
in the next presidential year. 

The Republicans also renewed the attempt, apparently aban- 774, The 
doned during the Hayes administration, to retain the colored ^Iq^^H^^^'^ 
vote of the South. There was no doubt that the Southern states 1890 

1 The government purchased from the Indians the district of Oklahoma (" the 
beautiful land ") in Indian Territory and opened it for settlement at noon, April 
22, 1889. A horde of pioneers, who had been waiting anxiously on the borders, 
swarmed into the coveted territory', and before night several " cities " were staked 
out. In 1890 the only territories that remained within the limits of the United 
States were Utah, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Arizona, and New Mexico. Utah 
was entitled to statehood by its population, but the existence of the Mormon in- 
stitution of polygamy prevented its admission until the Mormon Church prom- 
ised to abolish polygamy (1895). Oklahoma and Indian Territory were combined 
and admitted as the state of Oklahoma in 1908. In 1912 New Mexico and Arizona 
were admitted to statehood after a long controversy over the proposed union of 
the territories. With the admission of New Mexico and Arizona we have a solid 
band of forty-eight states from ocean to ocean, and our only territories (Alaska, 
Hawaii, Porto Rico) are rather of the nature of foreign colonies. 



550 History of the Republic siiice the Civil War 

were violating both the fifteenth and the fourteenth amend- 
ments. They were depriving the negro of his vote by fraud, 
force, or intimidation ; and they were still enjoying a representa- 
tion in Congress based on their total population, black and white. 
At the time of Harrison's election they had over twenty congress- 
men and presidential electors more than the strict enforcement of 
the second section of the Fourteenth Amendment would entitle 
them to. Accordingly the Republican House of 1890 passed the 
Federal Election Law (called by the Democrats the " Force Bill"), 
^ providing that, on the petition of 500 voters, federal agents 

should supervise the national elections in any district. In the 
more conservative Senate the bill was fortunately defeated ; for- 
tunately, for, in spite of the fact that the South enjoys a larger 
representation in Congress than its voting population entitles it 
to, the reintroduction of federal supervision and federal arms in 
the Southern elections would have only fanned into flame the 
embers of sectional bitterness. The failure of the Federal Elec- 
tion Bill of 1890 marks the end of political interference by the 
North in Southern elections, although there is still a strong and 
widespread feeling in the North that the government ought to 
take steps to protect the negro against lynching and to guarantee 
him his constitutional right to the ballot.^ 
775. The Mc- The Republican platform of 1888 pledged the party to a high 
Bmf?8^^"^ protective tariff. In the spring of 1890, therefore, William Mc- 
Kinley of Ohio, chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, 

1 On the whole, public opinion in the North seems to favor letting the South 
handle the negro problem in its own way. Most of the Southern states have framed 
constitutions since 1890 containing clauses which practically disqualify the negro, 
for a while at least. For example, in the Louisiana Constitution of 1S98 the 
famous '' grandfather clause " restricts the suffrage to those whose grandfathers 
voted. Under this clause the negro registration was reduced in Louisiana from 
127,000 in 1S96 to 5300 in 1900. The Supreme Court has refused to pronounce 
on the constitutionality of such proceedings, — in other words, has "let the 
South alone," which is all that it asks. The cause for this complacency on 
the part of the North is probably chiefly the large investments of Northern 
capital in Southern industries, and the consequent desire to have business un- 
disturbed by political wranglings. It may be that the idea of a tardy reparation 
for the injuries done the South in the Reconstruction days also influences the 
Northern attitude. 



The Clevela7id Democracy 551 

introduced into the House the tariff bill which bears his name. 
Duties were increased on almost all articles of household con- 
sumption, — food, carpets, clothing, tools, coal, wood, tinware, 
linen, thread. Prices rose immediately. Wage earners felt the 
pinch throughout the country. The opponents of protection 
claimed that the tariff benefited the trusts alone ; that the in- 
creased American capital due to the tariff went into the pockets 
of the manufacturers as profits, not to the workers as wages. 

So perfect was the Republican House machine under the 776. The 
Reed rules that the important McKinley Bill was passed in less ver A^t^is^Jo 
than two weeks. In the Senate, however, it was held up for 
four months. Seventeen of the forty-seven Republican Senators 
came from farming and mining states west of the Mississippi. 
They were not much interested in high protection, but some of 
them were very much interested in silver mining. They thought 
Congress ought to " protect " silver as an American product just 
as much as wool or iron. This could not be done by any kind 
of tariff legislation, but the government might purchase enough 
silver to keep the price of the metal from falling in the general 
market. Although by the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 (p. 518) 
the government had for twelve years been purchasing silver at 
the rate of $2,000,000 a month, the price of the metal declined 
steadily. The silver miners clamored for the government to buy 
still more, even to take all the silver that should be brought to 
the mints. In order to win the Western votes for the tariff and 
also to ''do something for silver " as an American product. Con- 
gress in 1890 passed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, by which 
it pledged the government to buy 4,500,000 ounces of silver 
every month at the market price (at that time about a dollar an 
ounce), and issue certificates to the full amount of the silver 
purchased. The government stored the silver in its vaults, and, 
as the price kept declining in spite of its large purchases, it saw 
its accumulating stock constantly shrinking in value. The next 
administration reaped the full curse of this foolish act to bribe 
the " silver senators." 



552 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



777. The 
*' tidal wave 
of 1890 



778. Our 
foreign pol- 
icy, 1891- 
^893 



779. Pan- 
Americanism 
and reci- 
procity 



When the congressional election of 1890 approached, the 
Republicans had been in power for twenty months. Their 
record was not an encouraging one on which to go before the 
voters of the country. They had almost emptied the Treasury 
by expenditures, especially in the pension department, which 
seemed reckless. They had tried to revive the discarded policy 
of controlling the elections in the South by federal force. They 
had managed Congress with a high hand, and sought to increase 
their narrow majorities by admitting states whose population 
was -far below the federal ratio of representation.^ They had 
committed the government to the purchase of 54,000,000 
ounces of silver per annum at a constant loss. And, finally, they 
had passed a tariff act which increased the price of living for 
every household in the land. The verdict of the country at 
the polls was what is popularly known as a " landslide," — 
a crushing condemnation of the policy of the party in power. 
The election returned to Congress 235 Democrats and 88 
Republicans. 

For the remaining two years of Harrison's term nothing in 
the way of legislation could be accomplished. The large Demo- 
cratic majority in the House frustrated the administration's 
plans, while the Senate, with its Republican majority of six, 
kept the House from repealing the high tariff legislation. All 
interest in these years centers in the foreign policy of the coun- 
try, where the executive and the Senate could act unhampered 
by the House. 

It will be remembered that Blaine, during his few months 
of vigorous service as Secretary of State in Garfield's cabinet 
(188 1), had tried to increase our influence in Central and South 
America by securing control of the Isthmian Canal route and 
by negotiating reciprocity treaties of commerce between the 
United States and the Latin-American republics (p. 527). In 



1 In 1889 the ratio was one congressman to every 151,000 of the population. 
The population of Montana was 132,000, of Idaho 84,000, and of Wyoming only 
60,000 at the time of their admission. 



The Cleveland Democracy 553 

Harrison's cabinet Blaine resumed his active policy. A Pan- 
American Congress (already proposed in 1881) met at Wash- 
ington in October, 1889. It was composed of delegates from 
nineteen countries of Latin America. The subjects discussed 
were mutual trade regulations, a uniform standard of weights 
and measures, a common currency, and a code for the arbitra- 
tion of the frequent quarrels among the Latin republics. A 
Bureau of the American Republics was founded at Washing- 
ton to keep us informed of the fortunes of our sister states 
in the tropics. Blaine labored hard to get his reciprocity doctrine 
incorporated into the McKinley tariff in 1890, but was able only 
to get a partial recognition of reciprocity from the Senate.^ 

Diplomatic quarrels with Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and 780. The 
Chile brought us at times to the verge of war during Harrison's islands 
administration. The Samoan Islands in the Pacific Ocean were 
occupied on a " tripartite " agreement between Great Britain, 
Germany, and the United States. Prince Bismarck, the German 
chancellor, was anxious to build up a large colonial empire to 
rival Great Britain's. Acting under his orders the German con- 
sul in Samoa schemed to oust the British and Americans. He 
raised the German flag over Apia, the chief town of the islands, 
set up his own " king," declared war on the rightful king in 
the name of his Majesty the German Emperor, and prepared 
to shell the villages which resisted him. American warships 

1 It was a sort of "backhanded" reciprocity that Mr. Aldrich, the Senate 
leader, got into the bill. Instead of removing certain duties in case the southern 
republics opened their markets to our products, the President was authorized to 
increase the duties in case those republics increased the tax on our exports 
to them. Blaine would have paid with our pork, beef, lumber, flour, shoes, 
iron, furniture, for the coffee, rubber, hides, drugs, and other imports from the 
southern repubHcs which did not compete with our own production, thereby 
stimulating our trade and reviving our shipping. But Congress feared that it 
would be an entering wedge for free trade. Ten years later, when he was Presi- 
dent of the United States, McKinley himself advocated Blaine's policy of 
reciprocity. It was the topic of the speech he made at the Pan-American Expo- 
sition at Buffalo on the eve of his assassination (September 5, 1901). But Congress 
steadily refused to let down the bars of protection at any point until, under 
President Taft's urgent advocacy, it passed, in extra session in the summer of 
1911, a bill providing for reciprocity with Canada, which Canada rejected. 



554 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

were hurried to Apia, and the decks were cleared for action, 
when a terrific typhoon struck the harbor (March i6, 1889), 
capsizing the German and American ships or dashing them on 
the beach and the coral reefs. A conference followed at Berlin 
the next month, in which the chancellor, in spite of much 
blustering, was forced by Blaine's firm dispatches to recognize 
the neutrality of the islands and the full rights of England and 



l^^ 

-^^^^--V::^ 



'^^^^^ 



^.. '?T]\ 



.4. 








Our Fleet leaving Hampton Roads on its Voyage round the World 



781. The seal 
fisheries in 
Bering Sea 



the United States in the protectorate over the native king. It 
was the first conspicuous participation of our country in " world 
politics," and it was also a spur to the construction of an ade- 
quate navy. By the end of the following year Congress had 
appropriated $40,000,000 for the building of new warships, and 
before the end of Harrison's administration we had risen from 
the twelfth to the fifth place among the naval powers. 

Blaine had inherited from the Cleveland administration a dis- 
pute with Great Britain over the seal fisheries in Bering Sea. 
He contended that Bering Sea was a mare clausum (" closed 



TJie Cleveland De^nocracy 555 

sea "), appertaining entirely to Alaska, and hence within the 
sole jurisdiction of the United States. The British claimed that 
it was the " high sea," and that our jurisdiction extended only 
to the ordinary three-mile limit from shore. Under executive 
orders our revenue cutters seized eight British sealing vessels 
during the summer of 1889, all outside the three-mile limit, 
and Blaine addressed the British premier. Lord Salisbury, in 
language which drew in reply a virtual threat of war (June, 
1890). On sober reflection our government receded from its 
dictatorial position and agreed to submit the whole matter to 
arbitration. The tribunal, which met at Paris in 1893, decided 
every point against us. Bering Sea was declared open, and we 
were forced to pay damages for the seizure of the British 
vessels. 

Serious quarrels with Italy and Chile also disturbed the 
Harrison administration. In the former case the Italian gov- 
ernment, not understanding that our federal administration has 
no concern with the criminal jurisdiction of any state, demanded 
that our State Department investigate the murder of some 
Italians in New Orleans and bring to punishment the guilty 
men ; while in Chile a revolutionary party which had over- 
turned the government objected to our minister's offering an 
asylum to the leaders of the defeated faction. It looked like 
certain w^ar with Chile when, in the autumn of 189 1, American 
sailors from the cruiser Baltimore were killed in the streets of 
Valparaiso, and the Chilean foreign minister publicly character- 
ized President Harrison's protest to Congress as an " errone- 
ous or deliberately incorrect " statement. But the firm attitude 
of our government, coupled with patience and considerateness 
in the negotiations, brought Italy to accept, and Chile to offer, 
the apologies which closed the incidents. 

Blaine's popularity was enhanced by his vigorous administra- 732. The 



tion 



resignation of 



of the Department of State. In 1891 there were rumors secretary 
of his nomination for the presidency the next year. Blaine him- Blaine 
self gave no support to the movement, and even declared early 



55^ History of the Republic siiice the Civil War 

in 1892 that he was not a candidate. However, three days be- 
fore the Republican convention met at Minneapolis (June 4, 
1892), Blaine suddenly resigned his cabinet position in a curt 
note. His motives, like the motives of his conduct in 1888, 
have never been fully known. Illness, tedium of the cares of 
office, lack of sympathy with his chief, desire for an eleventh- 
hour nomination for the presidency, have all been advanced as 
the causes for his resignation. At any rate, he received only 
182 votes in the convention to 535 for Harrison, and retired, 
much broken in health, to his Maine home, where he died the 
following January. Blaine's character is one of the hardest 
to estimate in all our history. He was brilliant, able, genial, 
and brave ; but there persistently appears in his character 
and deeds a mysterious spot of moral suspicion that will not 
" out " with all the washings of friendly biographers. He 
could be mercilessly clear in his exposure of other men ; but 
in his revelation of self there was always a suggestion of fog. 
On the whole, he was our most prominent political leader 
between Lincoln and Roosevelt. 
783. The As the presidential campaign of 1892 approached, it was evi- 
partV^ dent that a new factor of great importance had entered our 
national politics. We have already noticed the activity of the 
Grangers and the Knights of Labor in the seventies and the 
eighties. About 1890 these organizations (expanded already into 
the Farmers' Alliance and the American Federation of Labor) 
united to make a compact political party. They held a national 
convention at Cincinnati in May, 1891, with over 1400 dele- 
gates from 32 states. They adopted the title of People's party 
(familiarly '' Populists "), and drew up a radical platform de- 
manding, among other reforms, the free coinage of silver, the 
abolition of the national banks, a graduated income tax, the 
government ownership of railroads, steamship lines, telegraph 
and telephone service, and the election of United States sena- 
tors by popular vote. The next year they assembled at Denver 
and nominated James B. Weaver of Iowa for president. 



The Clei'eland Democracy 557 

Meanwhile the Democrats were in a quandary. Cleveland 784. cieve- 
was their strongest man, but he had bitter enemies among the l^fegf ^^^^^*^ 
machine politicians of the East, like Governor David B. Hill of 
New York, while his fearless condemnation of free silver made 
him an impossible candidate in the eyes of the Democratic 
managers in the West. But the very qualities which disquali- 
fied Cleveland in the eyes of the politicians commended him to 
the people. He had been a people's President in 1885 ; he be- 
came the people's nominee in 1892. In spite of the efforts 
of the Democratic machine politicians to secure anti-Cleveland 
delegates to the convention, the tide of popular feeling set 
stronger and stronger toward the ex-President as the day of the 
convention approached. He was nominated on the first ballot, 
and the following November was elected over Harrison by 277 
votes to 145, with a popular plurality of about 400,000. A Dem- 
ocratic House was reelected, and the Republicans lost their long 
hold in the Senate. For the first time since Buchanan's day a 
Democratic administration had a majority in both branches of 
Congress. 

For the first time also since the election of i860 a third party 
figured in the electoral column. Weaver, the Populist candidate, 
carried the four states of Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, and Nevada, 
receiving 22 electoral votes and polling over 1,000,000 popular 
votes. The significance for the Democratic party of this radical 
movement in the West will appear when we study the presi- 
dential campaign of 1896. 

Problems of Cleveland's Second Term 

It is doubtful if any other American president in times of 785. Diffi- 

peace has had to contend with such harassing problems as con- fronting 

fronted Grover Cleveland when he was inaugurated for a second ^[g^g^^^J 

time, March 4, 1893. The Treasury, which he had turned over in 1893 
to President Harrison's secretary four years earlier with a bal- 
ance of about $100,000,000, was empty. The gold reserve, 



558 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

maintained by the government to protect its paper money in cir- 
culation, had sunk to the danger limit. Throughout the country 
there was serious industrial depression, due to uncertainty as 
to how a solid Democratic Congress would treat the tariff, and 
to apprehension lest the radical Populists of the West should cap- 
ture the Democratic party. Thousands of laborers were thrown 
out of employment just at the time when the high prices fol- 
lowing the McKinley tariff made their living most precarious ; 
and agitators were ready to organize the discontented into a cru- 
sade against the great capitalist interests, the railroads, and the 
protected trusts. 

786. The The most immediate problem that confronted the President 
Treasury was the condition of the Treasury. Ever since the resumption 

of specie payments, in 1879, it had been the policy of the govern- 
ment to keep a reserve of at least $100,000,000 in gold for the 
redemption of any of the $346,000,000 in greenbacks still in 
circulation. By the Sherman Silver Act of 1890 the government 
was steadily increasing the volume of its paper money by issuing 
certificates to the value of the silver purchased. The green- 
backs and silver certificates in circulation in 1893 amounted to 
nearly $500,000,000, all of which the Treasury considered itself 
bound to redeem in gold if the demand were made. 

787. The Now it is a well-known economic law that when currency of 
different grades of value exists in a country, the cheaper kind 
drives the other out of circulation. This means simply that if 
a man has his choice between paying a bill with dollars that he 
knows will always and everywhere be worth 100 cents and dol- 
lars which he suspects may sometime or somewhere be worth 
only 50 cents, he will part with the latter and save the former. 
In spite of our government's efforts to maintain a "parity," or a 
constant ratio, between silver and gold, silver steadily declined 
in price, and the value of the silver dollar consequently shrank. 
Banks and individuals then began to hoard their gold. The 
yellow metal threatened to disappear from circulation. Just 
before the passage of the Sherman Act the government was 



gold famine 



\ 



The Cleveland Democracy 



559 



receiving 85 per cent of its customs duties in gold ; two years 
later less than 20 per cent of these payments were made in gold. 
To make matters worse, the uncertainty and depression in busi- 
ness made foreigners unwilling to invest in our securities, and we 
had to ship large quantities of gold abroad to pay unfavorable 
trade balances. 

Two immediate duties were before President Cleveland, — to 788. The 
stop the further purchase of silver, and to replenish the Treasury shennan A^t 
' ' with gold. The first of these '^^3 

duties was accomplished by the 
repeal of the Sherman Act, in an 
extra session of Congress called 
in the late summer of 1893.^ 

The replenishment of the gold 789. The 

1 , , bond trans- 

supply, however, proved a more actions with 

difficult task, which occupied the J' ^- ^^''^^^ 
entire administration. Twice dur- 
ing the year 1894 the Secretary 
of the Treasury sold $5o,ooo,ocjo 
worth of bonds for gold, without 
helping matters much. For the 
buyers of the bonds simply pre- 
sented greenbacks at the Treas- 
ury for redemption, to get the 
gold to pay for the bonds. They thus took out of the Treasury 
with one hand the gold they put in with the other. Determined 
to stop this " endless-chain " process of the withdrawal and the 
restoration of the same millions continually, Cleveland early in 
1895 summoned to the White House Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan, 
the most powerful financial figure in America. Mr. Morgan 
arranged with the President to furnish the Treasury some 
$65,000,000 in gold in return for the government's 4 per cent 

1 This repeal passed the House readily, but was fought bitterly for two months 
in the Senate, where one sixth of the members came from the seven " silver 
states" of the West, which contained less than 2 per cent of the population of 
the country. 




Copyright, Pach Brothers 

J. Pierpont Morgan 



560 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

bonds. The price Mr. Morgan charged for the gold secured him 
the bonds at a considerably lower figure than the public were 
paying for them at the time, and a cry went up from the Western 
Democrats and Populists that Cleveland had entered into an 
unholy alliance with the money lenders, and was squandering 
the country's resources to enrich the bankers of New York and 
London. If Mr. Morgan did drive a hard bargain with the 
government, he at least secured an actual supply of gold for the 
Treasury (one half the amount being obtained from foreign 
bankers) and went to considerable expense to prevent the ship- 
ment of gold abroad. The President defended himself for enter- 
ing into this private bargaining for gold on the ground that the 
state of the Treasury was desperate and that the people had 
twice within a year given proof of their unwillingness to part 
with their gold hoardings to strengthen the credit of the govern- 
ment.^ Altogether during Cleveland's administration the govern- 
ment issued bonds to the amount of $262,000,000 in order to 
attract enough gold to keep the reserve up to the $100,000,000 
mark. The election of 1896, which was fought on the currency 
issue, resulted in the defeat of silver, and gold came out of hiding. 
790. Thewii- Although Cleveland was elected in 1892 chiefly on the tariff 
Tariff Bill issue, his efforts to get from Congress a purely revenue tariff 
0^^894 ^gj.g j^Q more successful than they had been in 1888 (p. 537). 

William L. Wilson of West Virginia introduced a bill in Decem- 
ber, 1893, providing for the removal of duties on all raw mate- 
rials (wool, iron ore, coal, lumber, sugar) and a considerable 
reduction in the duties on manufactured articles (china, glass, 
r silk, cotton and woolen goods). The bill promptly passed the 

House by 204 votes to no, but when it reached the Senate 

1 Opinion will always be divided on the wisdom of Cleveland's action. It cost 
him the bitter hostility of the West, but it satisfied his own conscience. He con- 
cludes the chapter on The Bond Issues in his "Presidential Problems" (1904) 
with the words, "Though Mr. Morgan and Mr. Belmont and scores of others 
who were accessories in these transactions may be steeped in destructive propen- 
sities and may be constantly busy in sinful schemes, I shall always recall with sat- 
isfaction and self-congratulation my association with them at a time when our 
country sorely needed their aid." 



The Cleveland Democracy 561 

it was " held up." It made no difference that the Senate was 
Democratic. The " coal senators " of West Virginia, the '' iron 
senators " of Alabama, the " sugar senators " of Louisiana, the 
'' lumber senators " of Montana, all fought for the protection of 
their "interests." Under the lead of the Democratic Senator 
Gorman of Maryland (heavily interested in the sugar trust) the 
Wilson Bill was '' mutilated " beyond recognition by over 600 
amendments. Only wool and copper were left as free raw ma- 
terials, and the average of the duties was as high as under the 
Republican bill of 1883. It was still a " protective " tariff. The 
House reluctantly yielded, to save a deadlock, but President 
Cleveland refused to sign the bill, which he called a piece of 
"party perfidy and dishonor." It became a law (July, 1894) 
without his signature. The history of the Wilson-Gorman Bill 
showed that the trusts were firmly intrenched in the United 
States Senate, and increased the clamor of the radicals that the 
senators be elected by a popular vote. 

To make up for an anticipated loss of some $50,000,000 in 791. The 
tariff duties, the Wilson Bill contained a provision for a tax of ^°^°™^ 
2 per cent on incomes exceeding $4000. An income tax rang- 
ing from 3 per cent to 10 per cent had been imposed by the 
federal government during the years 1861 to 1872, to help 
meet the tremendous cost of the Civil War ; but the income tax 
in time of peace was resisted as unconstitutional and inquisitorial 
by the wealthy classes, on whom its burden would fall.^ In May, 
1895, the Supreme Court decided, by a vote of five to four (re- 
versing its decision of 1880), that the income tax was a direct 
tax and hence could be levied only by apportionment among the 
states according to population (Constitution, Art. I, sect. 2, clause 
3). Such apportionment would be impossible, as the wealth of 
the states bore no fair ratio to their population. This decision 
exempted the wealth obtained* from rents, stocks, and bonds 

1 When we think how small a percentage of the people of our land even 
to-day enjoy an income of $4000 a year, we realize that the income tax was dis- 
tinctly a piece of "class legislation." See Amendment XVI (p. 650). 



562 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



792. Coxey's 
army 



793. The 

Pullman 
strike, 1894 



from contributing to the support of the government, while al^ 
most every article of consumption of the poor laborer was taxed 
by the tariff. It still further stirred the radical temper of the 
West. The Supreme Court was decried as the rich man's ally, 
and the revocation of its power to pronounce laws of Congress 
unconstitutional was demanded.-^ 

With the financial and tariff policy of the country at sixes and 
sevens, the administration was still further harassed by serious 
labor troubles. The industrial depression of 1893 brought fail- 
ures, strikes, and lockouts in its train. The winter was attended 
with great suffering throughout the country, and tramps and 
vagrants swarmed over the land. An '^ army " of the unemployed, 
led by one Jacob Coxey, marched from Ohio to Washington to 
demand that Congress issue $500,000,000 in irredeemable paper 
currency, to be spent in furnishing work for the idle by improv- 
ing the highways all over the Union. The '' invasion " of Wash- 
ington by '' Coxey's army " ended in a farce. As the men 
marched across the lawn of the Capitol on May-day morning 
their leaders were arrested for '' walking on the grass," and the 
men straggled away to be lost in the modey city crowd. 

There was nothing farcical, however, in the conflict between 
capital and labor which broke out in Chicago that same m^onth of 
May. The Pullman Palace Car Company discharged a number 
of employees, and cut the wages of the rest, on the ground that it 
was suffering from " hard times." But in view of the fact that 
the company was paying 7 per cent dividends, that it had accu- 
mulated a surplus of $25,000,000 on a capital of $36,000,000, 
and that none of the officers' salaries had been decreased, the 
workers could not see that the company was suffering, and a 
committee of the docked men waited on Mr. Pullman to remon- 
strate. For this '' impertinence " three men on the committee 
were discharged. Then nearly, all the employees struck. 

1 In the year 1913 the sixteenth amendment to the Constitution was adopted, 
giving Congress the right to levy a tax on incomes " from whatever source de- 
rived." Its ratification was opposed chiefly in the Eastern states, whose wealth 
has to bear the chief burden of the tax. 



The Clevelatid Democracy 



563 



^^^'"''T^ r' 



About 4000 of the Pullman employees were members of the 794. The fed- 
powerful American Railway Union, an organization founded in ^nd^ the°^^ 
1893 under the presidency of Eugene V. Debs. The union injunction 
took up the matter at its June meeting in 1894, and demanded 
that the company submit the question of wages to arbitration. 
This Mr. Pullman curtly refused to do. The union then for- 
bade its men to '^ handle " the Pullman cars. The boycott 
extended to twenty-seven states and territories, affecting the 
railroads from Ohio to California. But the dire conflict came in 
Chicago. Early in July 
only six of the twenty- 
three railroads entering 
the city were unob- 
structed. United States 
mail trains carrying 
Pullman cars were not 
allowed to move. Presi- 
dent Cleveland ordered 
troops to the seat of 
disturbance, and an in- 
junction was issued 
by the federal court 
ordering the strikers to 

cease obstructing the United States mails. The reading of 
the injunction was received with hoots and jeers. Debs had 
appealed to the strikers to refrain from violence and the 
destruction of property, but they could not be restrained.^ 
Trains were ditched, freight cars destroyed, buildings burned 
and looted. At one or two points it became necessary for the 
federal troops to fire on the mob to protect their own lives. 




^vttl- 



Entrance to the German Building at the 
World's Fair 



1 Especially as their number was swelled by thousands of vagrant ruffians 
and "bums," who had been attracted to Chicago by the great Columbian 
Exposition of the preceding summer. This so-called " World's Fair" of 1893, in 
celebration of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America, was a 
veritable fairyland of dazzling white buildings, softened by fountains and lagoons. 
The Exposition cost about j^35,ooo,ooo, and was visited by over 20,000,000 people. 



564 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



795. Conse- 
quences of 
the strike 



796. The 
discontent of 
the radical 
Democrats 



Debs and his chief associates were arrested and imprisoned for 
contempt of court in not obeying the injunction. 

The strike was broken by the prompt action of the govern- 
ment, but it left ugly consequences. For the first time in our 
history federal troops had fired upon American citizens to 
preserve order, and American citizens had been imprisoned in 
time of peace, by order of a judge, without jury trial or even 
court-martial. Both these acts seemed harsh and tyrannical to 
many persons. Governor Altgeld of Illinois took the President 
severely to task for sending troops into the state, declaring that 
" Illinois was able to take care of herself"; and he was gener- 
ally supported by the Populist element of the West, while even 
among the conservatives of the East there was grave complaint 
of the injustice and danger of " government by injunction." ^ 
The discontent of the radicals with the administration was 
still further increased when the Supreme Court handed down a 
unanimous decision upholding the sentence of the Chicago fed- 
eral judge against Debs, just one week after its condemnation 
of the income tax as unconstitutional (May 27, 1895). 

On March 4, 1895, a call went out from some "insurgent" 
congressmen, addressed to the Democrats of the nation, declar- 
ing that the policy of the administration was not that of the 
majority of the party, and urging the radicals of the West to 
organize and take control of the Democratic party. The crusa- 
ders were ready, — radical Democrats, Populists, National Silver- 
ites; it needed only a leader to unite them into a compact 
army against the money lords of Wall Street, who, they believed, 
had loaded their farms with mortgages and purchased legis- 
latures and courts to thwart the people's will. But before we 



1 By an "injunction" a judge "enjoins" certain persons not to commit an 
act which he has defined in advance 'as punishable. If the person disobeys the 
judge's order, he is fined or even committed to prison for " contempt of court," 
instead of being duly tried and sentenced for the act itself. The judge by this 
procedure becomes both the accuser and the punisher. It is evident how 
tyrannous such a weapon as the injunction might become in the hands of a 
corrupt or cruel judge. 



The Cleveland Democracy 565 

describe the great battle between the East and the West in 
the election of 1896, we must turn for a moment to foreign 
affairs in Cleveland's second administration. 

The little kingdom of the Hawaiian Islands in the mid- 797. Foreign 
Pacific had for many years harbored American residents, who intervention 
came first as missionaries, then as planters and merchants to ^g Hawaii, 
exploit the coffee and sugar farms. The American residents 
enjoyed rights of citizenship in Hawaii, with the franchise, and 
occupied high offices. Our government had a coaling station in 
the Islands, and a reciprocity tariff treaty, negotiated in 1875, 
admitted some grades of Hawaiian sugar to the United States 
without duty. Ever since 1854 there had been talk of annexa- 
tion. Early in 1893 the new Queen Liliuokalani, a bitter enemy 
of the whites in the Islands, was deposed for attempting to 
overthrow the Constitution. A provisional government was set 
up by the white inhabitants, and the United States minister, John 
L. Stevens, protected the new government by a detachment of 
troops landed from the cruiser Bosto?i. The Islands w^ere 
declared a '' protectorate " of the United States, and the Ameri- 
can flag was raised over the government buildings. A few days 
later a treaty of annexation was sent by President Harrison to 
the Senate for ratification (February 15, 1893). The United 
States was to assume the Hawaiian debt of $2,000,000 
and pay the deposed queen a pension of $20,000 a year. But 
before the treaty was ratified Congress expired and Cleveland 
succeeded Harrison in the White House (March 4, 1893). 
Cleveland withdrew the treaty from the Senate, and after 
satisfying himself through a special commissioner to Hawaii 
that Stevens had acted too zealously in the January revo- 
lution, he ordered the flag to be lowered from the state build- 
ings, and offered to restore Queen Liliuokalani to her 
throne on condition that she should pardon all the Americans 
concerned in the revolution. When the queen refused to abandon 
her cherished plans of vengeance. President Cleveland dropped 
the whole matter. He was abused roundly for " hauling down 



566 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

the American flag " in Hawaii, but he had followed the century- 
old tradition of our Republic in refusing to seize by force 
the distant possessions of weaker nations on the plea of 
" civilizing " them.-^ 
798. The That the President lacked neither force nor courage in deal- 

bo^undary^dis- i^& with foreign nations, however, was amply proved in a seri- 
P"^® ous controversy with Great Britain over the validity of the 

Monroe Doctrine. The South American republic of Venezuela 
borders on the British colony of Guiana (see map, p. 574)- A 
chronic boundary dispute between the two nations assumed 
acute form in 1886, when Great Britain maintained that the 
line of her frontier included some 23,000 square miles of 
territory, containing rich mineral deposits. Venezuela com- 
plained of the rapacity of her powerful neighbor, and diplomatic 
relations between the countries were broken off (February, 
1887). The United States, by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, 
had guaranteed the integrity of the Latin-American republics 
by declaring that the western continent was closed to any 
further extension of the European colonial system. Our State 
Department offered its friendly offices to Great Britain in 
arbitrating the disputed boundary line, but the British govern- 
ment rejected the offer. Lord Salisbury regarded the Monroe 
Doctrine as an antiquated piece of American bravado, and 
declined to view the United States as an interested party in 
the dispute. Importuned by Venezuela, our State Department 
again and again begged England to arbitrate her claims. In 
February, 1895, Congress took up the matter, and by a joint 
resolution urged the same policy. Still Lord Salisbury remained 
obdurate ; and when Secretary Olney in a rather sharp dispatch 
(July 20, 1895) declared that the United States was ^' practically 
sovereign on this continent," and that it would " resent and 

1 The provisional government maintained itself without much difficulty until 
the Republican administration which followed Cleveland annexed the Hawaiian 
Islands to the United States, by a joint resolution of Congress (July, 1898), and 
later made them a fully organized territory with United States citizenship 
(April, 1900). 



The Cleveland Democracy 567 

resist any sequestration of Venezuelan soil by Great Britain," 
the English prime minister again replied in polite terms that 
the dispute was none of our business. 

But the American people believed that the maintenance of 799. The 
the Monroe Doctrine was their business. In December, 1895, tri'ne^upheid 
President Cleveland sent a message to Congress recommending 
that we take the decision of the boundary between Guiana and 
Venezuela into our own hands, " fully alive to the responsibility 
incurred and keenly realizing all the consequences that may 
follow," — in other words, even at the risk of war with Great 
Britain. Both Houses of Congress immediately adopted the 
recommendation by a unanimous vote, appropriating $100,000 
for the expenses of a boundary commission. The President's 
message and the action of Congress took the British people by 
storm. A wave of protest against war with their American 
kindred swept over the country. Three hundred and fifty mem- 
bers of Parliament rebuked Lord Salisbury's stubborn attitude 
by sending a petition to the President and Congress of the 
United States that all disputes between the two nations be 
settled by arbitration. The prime minister gave way, and con- 
sented courteously to furnish the American boundary commis- 
sion with all the papers it needed. In February, 1897, a treaty 
was signed at Washington, by which Great Britain agreed to 
submit her entire claim to arbitration ; and on October 3, 1899, 
a tribunal at Paris gave the verdict (favorable on the whole to 
Great Britain), fixing the line which had been in dispute for 
nearly sixty years. 

The defense of the Monroe Doctrine in the Venezuela con- 800. Dissen- 
troversy was the only official action of President Cleveland's Democratic 
second administration (with the exception of the opening of the "^^^^^ 
World's Fair at Chicago) that had the general approbation of 
the country. Denounced by the capitalists and corporations of 
the East for his attempt to lower the tariff, and by the Populist 
farmers of the West for his determination to maintain the gold 
reserve, berated by the labor unions for his prompt preservation 



568 History of the Repttblic since the Civil War 



801. The 
Democratic 
convention at 
Chicago, 
July, 1896 



of law and order at Chicago, and threatened with impeach- 
ment for hauling down the flag which he believed was unjustly 
raised in the islands of the Pacific, Mr. Cleveland must have felt 
relieved as the time of his deliverance from the cares of office 
drew near. 

The convention of the Democratic party, which met at Chicago 
July 7, 1896, proved to be entirely in the hands of the radicals 
of the West. They rejected by a majority of 150 votes the 
resolution of the Eastern 
" moderates " commending 
the administration of Grover 
Cleveland. They wrote a 
platform demanding the free 
and unlimited coinage of 
silver at the ratio to gold of 
16 to I ''without waiting for 
the aid or consent of any 
other nation." They con- 
demned the issue of bonds 
in time of peace, denounced 
government by injunction, 
and demanded enlarged pow- 
ers of the federal govern- 
ment in dealing with the 
trusts. Thechoiceof apromi- 
minent Eastern candidate for nomination, like Senator Hill of 
New York, or ex-Governor Russell of Massachusetts, was im- 
possible from the first. Among the free silverites Richard P. 
Bland of Missouri, author of the Silver Law of 1878, seemed to 
be the most promising candidate until William Jennings Bryan 
of Nebraska swept the convention off its feet by an oration 
filled with the enthusiasm of a crusader in a holy cause. The 
silverites made him the man of the hour, '' the savior of De- 
mocracy," " the new Lincoln." He was nominated on the fifth 
ballot amid scenes of the wildest enthusiasm. 




William Jennings Bryan 



The Cleveland Democracy 569 

Mr. Bryan, born in i860, had hardly more than reached the 802. Bryan 
legal age of eligibility for the presidency. He was a self-made ^° ^ ^° ^^ 
man, of Spartan simplicity of tastes and unimpeachable personal 
habits. As a rising young lawyer in Nebraska he had made a 
remarkable campaign for a seat in Congress, turning a Repub- 
lican majority of 3000 in his district in 1888 into a Democratic 
majority of nearly 7000 in 1890. He served two terms in Con- 
gress, then returned to the West to devote himself to writing 
and speaking in the cause of free silver. His opponent in the 
presidential race of 1896 was Major William McKinley of Ohio, 
one of the most admirable and amiable characters in our 
history. McKinley could oppose to Bryan's four short years of 
public service a well-rounded career, including meritorious serv- 
ice in the Civil War, fourteen years in Congress, and two terms 
as Governor of Ohio. 

McKinley's nomination was secured and his campaign man- 803. "Mark" 
aged by " Mark " Hanna, who was the very incarnation of that advance" *^^ 
spirit of commercial enterprise which we have seen creating agent of ^^ 
the great trusts of the last years of the nineteenth century. 
Business was everything for Hanna. '^ You have been in politics 
long enough," he wrote to a state official of Ohio in 1890, " to 
know that no man in public life owes the public anything." If 
Major McKinley's finer moral sensibilities were hurt by such 
cynical doctrines, his conviction that he was fighting a campaign 
for the preservation of our national credit and honor, was 
enough to make him pardon the use of the millions of dollars 
which Hanna, '' the advance agent of prosperity," raised to 
" grease the wheels " of the Republican machine.^ 

The campaign was fought on the issue of free silver. The 804. Argu- 
radical Democrats demanded that the government should take ^g" co/nag?^ 
all the silver presented at its mints, and coin it into legal cur- of silver at 
rency at the ratio of sixteen ounces of silver to one ounce of 

1 It was estimated that from August r to election day in November the ex- 
penses of the Republican campaign were ^25,000 a day. Money was sent by 
the central committee into every doubtful county of the Union. 



5 JO History of the Republic since the Civil War 

gold. As sixteen ounces of silver were worth in the open market 
only about $ii in 1896, while one ounce of gold was uni- 
formly worth $20.67, the silverites demanded that our govern- 
ment should maintain in circulation dollars that were worth 
intrinsically only about fifty cents. ^ Their arguments for this 
apparent folly were that the United States was strong and in- 
dependent and rich enough to use whatever metal it pleased 
for money, without regard to what England, France, or Germany 
did ; that the supply of gold did not furnish sufficient currency 
for the business of the country anyway, and that what there 
was of it was in the hands of bankers, who hoarded it to in- 
crease its value ; that the farmers and small traders conse- 
quently were forced to pay an ever-increasing tax in the fruits 
of their labor to meet the interest (reckoned in gold values) 
on their mortgaged farms and shops ; that the Eastern bank- 
ers, who alone had the gold to buy government bonds, could 
control the volume of currency, which (since the repeal of the 
Sherman Act in 1893) was based increasingly on the national 
bonds. The unlimited coinage of silver and its direct issue to the 
people by the government would, they thought, break up this 
monopoly of the nation's money held by a few rich bankers on 
the Atlantic seaboard. 
805. Bimet- The Republicans and the " sound-money " Democrats were 
willing to admit that we needed more currency, and favored 
" international bimetallism," or the use of both gold and silver 
by agreement with the leading commercial nations of the world. 
The Republican platform pledged the party to work for such 
an agreement.^ But for the United States alone to adopt the 

1 The value of the silver "dollar" of 371 J^ grains sank as follows: 1873, 
^1.004 ; 1875, ^0.96 ; 1885, ^0.82 ; 1893, |io.6o ; 1894, ^0.49 (due to the suspension 
of silver coinage in India in 1893). 

2 Even this concession could not keep the ranks of the Republicans intact. 
Several silver delegates from Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, South Dakota, 
and Wyoming, including four United States senators and two congressmen, 
seceded from the convention under the leadership of Senator Teller of Colorado, 
who had " been at the birth of the Republican party," and voted for every one * 
of its candidates from Fremont to Harrison. 



II 



TJie Cleveland Deinocracy 



571 



double gold and silver standard would be to make us the 
dumping ground for the silver of the world, and so ruin our 
credit that we should not be able to sell a dollar's worth of 
our securities abroad. 

It was a bitter battle between the Western plowholder and 8O6. The 
the Eastern bondholder. Bryan made a whirlwind campaign, 1896^^^^° ° 
traveling 18,000 miles in fourteen weeks, making 600 speeches, 
which it is estimated were heard by 5,000,000 Americans. He 

won thousands of con- 
verts to the doctrine of 
free silver, but was not 
able to carry the country in 
November. In the largest 
presidential vote ever cast 
(13,600,000) McKinley 
won by a plurality of 
about 600,000. Even in 
McKinley's home state 
Bryan polled 477,000 
votes to his opponent's 
525,000. The electoral 
vote (hardly ever a fair 
index of the sentiment of 
the country at large) was 
271 to 176. 

The election of 1896 was of tremendous importance in our his- 807. signifl- 

., , , 1 cance of the 

tory. It split the Democratic party mto two irreconcilable camps, campaign of 

It signaled the complete victory in the Republican party of the '^^^ 
business '' power behind the throne " of government. Thou- 
sands of Americans were ready in 1896 to vote for a party which 
represented a sane opposition to the growing power of the trusts, 
the monopoly of coal, oil, and lumber lands, the nurture of 
highly prosperous industries by a protective tariff which taxed 

1 Late in the summer the " gold Democrats " held a convention and nominated 
General John M. Palmer for President, lie polled only 134,645 votes. 




William McKinley 



5 72 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

the poor man's food and clothing, and the shameless influence 
of railroads, express companies, and other corporations with our 
legislatures. But the true " people's party," which should have 
solidified to combat these economic evils, was led astray by the 
glittering oratory of the silver champions. It rallied to a plat- 
form that was bitterly sectional, to a doctrine that was economi- 
cally unsound, and to a leader who was immature and untried. 
" Lunacy dictated the platform," said a Democratic paper in 
New York, " and hysteria evolved the candidate." Of two evils 
the majority of Americans believed they were choosing the less 
in voting for McKinley on Hanna's " business platform." But 
the election strengthened the hold upon our country of the great 
trusts, whose enormous political power the American people have 
come fully to realize and are to-day taking courage to attack. 



REFERENCES 

A People's President : D. R. Dewey, National ProbleiJis (American 
Nation Series), chaps, ii-viii; E. L. Bogart, Economic History of the 
United States, chaps, xxvii, xxix ; A. B. Hart, American History told by 
Contemporaries, Vol. IV, Nos. 164, 165; H. T. Peck, Twenty Years of 
the Republic, chaps, i, ii, iv; Grover Cleveland, Presidential Problems, 
chap, i; E. B. Andrews, The United States in our Own Ti?ne, chaps, 
xvii, xviii ; J. W. Jenks, The Trust Problem, chaps, x-xii ; Adams and 
Sumner, Labor Problems, chaps, vi-viiij Edward Stanwood, Histoiy 
of the Presidejicy^ chaps, xxvii, xxviii ; C. D. Wright, Industrial Evolu- 
tion of the United States, chaps, xxiv, xxvi; William MacDonald, 
Select Statutes of United States History, i86i-i8g8, Nos. iii, 115. 

A Billion-Dollar Country : Dewey, chaps, i, ix-xv ; Bogart, chap, 
xxvi; Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 166, 170, 178; Peck, chap, v; Andrews, 
chaps, xix, xx ; Stanwood, chap, xxix ; James G. Blaine, chaps, x-xi ; 
American Tariff Controversies in the Nineteenth Century, chap, xvi; 
MacDonald, Nos. 120, 129; J. D. Long, The New American Navy, 
Vol. I, chap, i ; Francis Curtis, The Republican Pa^iy, chaps, ix-x ; 
R. T. Ely, Monopolies and Trusts, chap, vi ; James Bryce, The Ameri- 
can Commonwealth (enlarged edition of 1911), Vol. II, chap, xciii. 

Problems of Cleveland's Second Term : Dewey, chaps, xvi-xx ; Finan- 
cial History of the United States, chap, xix; Hart, Vol. IV, Nos. 171, 



The Cleveland Democracy 573 

179, 194 ; Peck, chaps, vii-xi ; Andrews, chaps, xxi-xxvi ; Cleveland, 
chaps, ii-iv ; Stanwood, Presidency, chaps, xxx, xxxi ; Tariff Coniiv- 
7fe?-sies, chap, xvii ; MacDonald, Nos. 98, 100, 102, 103, 117, 125, 126, 
130; F. W. Taussig, The Silver Situation in the United States {Publi- 
cations of the Ajnerican Economic Association, Vol. VII, pp. 1-118); 
J. W. Foster, American Diplomacy in the Orient, chap, xi; W. J. 
Bryan, The First Battle, chaps, ix-xi, xlix-1 ; F. J, Stimson, The 
Modern Use of Injunctions {Political Science Quarterly, Vol. X, pp. 
189-202) ; W. H. Harvey, Coin's Financial School. 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. The Formation of the Trusts: R. T. Ely, Labor Movement in 
America, pp. 1-38 ; H. D. Lloyd, Wealth against Commonwealth, pp. 
373-388; PIenry Seager, Introduction to Economics, pp. 476-509; 
Bogart, pp. 400-416; Dewey, A\itional Problems, pp. 188-202. 

2. "Czar" Reed: Dewey, pp. 152-156; Peck, pp. 198-201; 
Andrews, pp. 562-564; M. P. Follett, The Speaker of the Hotcse of 
Kepj'esentatives, pp. 185-214; articles for and against Reed's methods, 
in \}[i& N^orth American Reviezo, Vol. CLI, pp. 90-111,237-250; T. B. 
Reed, A Deliberative Body (a defense in the N^oHh American Reviezu^ 
Vol. CLII, pp. 148-156). 

3. The New South: Andrews, pp. 745-764; Bryce (ed. of 191 1), 
pp. 491-51 1 ; E. S. Murphy, Problems of the Present South, pp. 1-27, 
97-103; A. B. Hart, The Southern South, pp. 218-277; editorials in 
the Outlook, Vol. LXXXVIII, pp. 760-761 ; Vol. XCII, pp. 626-629; 
the Revietv of Peviezvs, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 177-190; series of articles, 
with interesting illustrations, in the World's Work, Vol. XIV (the 
Southern number, June, 1907). 

4. The Knights of Labor : F:ly, labor Movement, pp. 75-88 ; Wright, 
pp. 245-263 ; Reports of the United States Industrial Commission, Vol. 
XVII, pp. ^-24; T. V. Powderly, Thirty Years of Labor, pp. 186-196; 
The Organization of Labor {N^orth A?nerican Review, Vol. CXXXV, pp. 
1 18-126). 

5. The Venezuelan Controversy : J. B. Henderson, American Diplo- 
matic Questions, pp. 411-442; CLEVELAND, pp. 173-281 ; Peck, 412- 
436; MacDonald, No. 126; Hart, Contempo7'aries,V q\. IV, No. 179; 
A. D. White, AiUobiography, Vol. II, pp. 117-126. 



CHAPTER XX 

ENTERING THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

The Spanish War and the Philippines 

808. The Thrusting its western end between the two great peninsulas 

Cuba of Florida and Yucatan, which guard the entrance to the Gulf 

of Mexico, lies the island of Cuba, " the pearl of the Antilles." 




ATLANTIC 



^(J' JAMAICA Kingston 





The West Indies and Neighboring Spanish-American RepubHcs 



From the time of its discovery by Columbus down to the very 
close of the nineteenth century Cuba belonged to the crown of 
Spain. It had remained faithful when the Spanish colonies in 
Central and South America had taken advantage of the Napole- 
onic upheaval to revolt (p. 239), but the mother country had 
poorly requited the fidelity of the island colony. Corrupt officials 

574 



Entering the Twentieth Centnry 575 

squandered the revenues of Cuba, raised by heavy taxation, and 
the least movement of resistance was ruthlessly quelled by the 
trained soldiery of Spain. 

The fate of Cuba was always a matter of great concern to the 809. our 
United States. When the acquisition of Florida and Texas gave cubT'° '° 
us control of over 1000 miles of the shores of the Gulf of 
Mexico, and the discovery of gold in California made neces- 
sary the protection of a route across the Isthmus of Panama, 
it was important that Cuba, which controlled the entrance to 
the Gulf, should not be in the hands of a powerful or hostile 
nation. Again, when the westward extension of slavery was 
checked by the plateaus of the Rockies, it had been necessary 
to curb the zeal of the Southern " expansionists," who were 
reaching out toward Cuba for new plantation lands. ^ 

The Civil War put an end to the menace of a new Cuban 8 10. Agita- 
slave state, and the completion of the Pacific railroads made it liberty ^'^^^^ 
unnecessary to guard the Isthmus for the protection of the 
route to the Far West. But still our interest in Cuba continued. 
Large amounts of American capital were invested in the sugar 
and tobacco plantations of the island during the prosperous 
decades which followed the Civil War. Many Cubans were 
naturalized in the United States, where they established centers 
of agitation for Cuban liberty. And many others, after natural- 
ization, returned to the island under the protection of their 
American citizenship, to aid their brother Cubans in throwing 
off the Spanish yoke. 

An especially severe insurrection broke out in 1895. The 811. The 
insurgents quickly overran nearly all the open country, and of^iVgs-^iSgT 
the Spanish leader, General Weyler, unable to bring them to 
face his 150,000 troops in regular batde, resorted to the cruel 
method of the " reconcentration camps." He gathered the non- 
combatants — old men, women, and children — from the country 

1 The student will recall the Ostend Manifesto of 1854, in which three Ameri- 
can ministers, with as little regard for international courtesy as for legal authority, 
announced the " right " of the United States to seize Cuba if Spain would not 
sell it (p. ni). 



5 76 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

into certain fortified towns, and herded them in wretched prison 
pens under cruel officers, where tens of thousands died of hun- 
ger and disease. The cries of the Cuban sufferers reached 
our shores. Scores of American citizens in the island were also 
being thrust into prison, and millions of American capital were 
being destroyed. 
812. Our in- Prudence and humanit}^ alike forbade the continuance of 
in'cuba these horrible conditions at our very doors. The platforms of 

both the great parties in 1896 expressed sympathy for the 
Cuban insurgents, and both Houses of Congress passed resolu- 
tions for the recognition of Cuban independence. President 
McKinley labored hard to get Spain to grant the island some 
degree of self-government, and spoke in a hopeful tone in his 
message to Congress of December, 1897. But in the early 
weeks of 1898 events occurred which roused public indignation 
to a pitch where it drowned the voices of diplomacy. On Feb^ 
ruary 9 a New York paper published the facsimile of a letter 
which had been stolen from the private correspondence of the 
Spanish minister at Washington, Senor de Lome. The letter 
characterized President McKinley as a " cheap politician who 
truckled to the masses." The country was still nursing its in- 
dignation over this insult to its chief executive, when it was 
horrified by the news that on the evening of February 15 the 
battleship Maine, on a friendly visit in the harbor of Havana, 
had been sunk by a terrific explosion, carrying two officers and 
266 men to the bottom. The Spanish government immediately 
accepted the resignation of Senor de Lome and expressed its 
sorrow over the '' accident " to the American warship. But the 
conviction (later confirmed through the examination of her sunken 
hull by a board of experts) that the Maine had been blown 
up from the outside seized on our people with uncontrollable 
force. Flags, pins, buttons, with the motto '' Remember the 
Maine r' appeared all over the land. The spirit of revenge 
was nurtured by the " yellow journals." Congress was waiting 
eagerly to declare war. 



Entering the Twefitieth Century 577 

After a last appeal to the Spanish government had been met 813. The war 
with the evasive reply that the Cubans would be granted " all ApH^^f^aU 
the liberty they could expect," McKinley transferred the re- 
sponsibility of the Cuban situation to Congress in his message 
of April 11.^ Eight days later, on the anniversary of the 
battle of Lexington and of the first bloodshed of the Civil War, 
Congress adopted a resolution recognizing the independence of 
Cuba, demanding the immediate withdrawal of Spain from the 
island, and authorizing the President to use the military and 
naval forces of the United States, if necessary, to carry out the 
resolution. Congress further pledged the United States, by 
the Teller Resolution, " to leave the government and control 
of the island of Cuba to its own people " when its pacification 
should be accomplished. The resolutions of April 19, 1898, 
were a virtual declaration of war against Spain. 

Our Navy Department, under the vigorous administration 814. Dewey's 
of Secretary Long and Assistant Secretary Roosevelt, was JJaniia ^ 
thoroughly prepared for the crisis. The Far Eastern fleet had ^^y ^' ^^9^ 
been gathered, under Commodore George Dewey, at the British 
station of Hong-Kong on the Chinese coast. Scarcely a week 
after the war resolutions had been passed, Dewey's ships in their 
drab war paint were on their way across the 600 miles of 
the China Sea that separate Hong-Kong from the Spanish co- 
lonial group of the Philippine Islands. The last night of April, 
with a bravery like that of his old commander, Farragut, at New 
Orleans, Dewey ran his fleet of armored cruisers and gunboats, 
under fire, through the fortified passage of Boca Grande into 
Manila Bay; and early on May-day morning he opened fire 
on the Spanish fleet anchored off Cavite. Five times Dewey 
led his squadron up and down the line of Spanish ships, 

1 There has been a diversity of opinion on the extent and the sincerity of 
the concessions offered by Spain in April, 1898. Only recently (May, igio) 
Senator Depew of New York has revived the criticism of McKinley's "weak- 
ness " in yielding to the popular clamor for war, and asserted that the terms 
offered by Spain were a suflficient basis for a peaceful settlement of the whole 
Cuban question. But such a view has found little or no support among American 
statesmen and historians. 



5/8 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



pouring into them an accurate and deadly fire, then drew out of 
range to give his grimed and hungry gunners their breakfast. He 
returned a few hours later to complete the work of destruction. 

By noon the 
entire Spanish 
fleet of ten 
ships was sunk 
or in flames, 
the land bat- 
teries of Cavite 
were silenced, 
and the city of 
Manila lay at 
the mercy of 
Dewey's guns. 
The Spanish 
had lost 634 
men and of^- 
cers. On the 
American side, 
in spite of the 
constant fire of 
the Spaniards, 
not a ship was 
hurt nor a life 
lost. It was 
the most com- 
plete naval 
victory in our 
history. 

815. cer- While the victorious fleet lay in the harbor of Manila, waiting 

vera's fleet ^^^ troops from the United States to complete the conquest of the 

Philippines, the Atlantic squadron, acting under Rear Admiral 

William T. Sampson, was blockading the coast of Cuba. A strong 

Spanish fleet of four huge armored cruisers and three torpedo 




' V^k 



i:€'-^t 



Eastern Asia and the Philippine Islands 



Entering the Tzventieth Centtcry 



579 



destroyers, commanded by Admiral Cervera, had sailed westward 
from the Cape Verde Islands on April 29. There were wild stories 
that Cervera's fleet would shell the unfortified cities along our 
coast, and some timorous families even abandoned their custom- 
ary summer outing at the seashore for fear of the Spanish guns. 
But experts knew that the fleet would put into some Spanish 
West Indian port for coal and provisions after its journey across 
the Atlantic. In spite of Admiral Sampson's diligent patrol, 
Cervera's fleet slipped by him and came to anchor in Santiago 




The Dewey Medal 

harbor, where it was discovered by the American lookouts, the 
last of May, and immediately '' bottled up " by Sampson's 
blockading squadron.-^ 

Meanwhile about 16,000 troops had been sent from the 816. The 
American camps in Florida to invade Cuba, under the command pa^g^^cuba 
of Major General Shafter. The most picturesque division of this 
army was the volunteer cavalry regiment, popularly known 
as " Roosevelt's Rough Riders," made up of Western cow- 
boys, ranchmen, hunters, and Indians, with a sprinkling of 
Harvard and Yale graduates. Theodore Roosevelt resigned 

1 The fleet included Commodore Schley's " flying squadron " (the cruiser 
Brooklyn and the battleships Massachusetts^ Texas^ and Iowa) with Admiral 
Sampson's own squadron (the cruiser A^ezv York, which was his flagship, and 
the battleships Indiana and Oregon). The Oregon had just completed a mar- 
velous voyage of 14,000 miles in 66 days, from San Francisco to Florida, around 
Cape Horn. She arrived and joined the blockading squadron as fresh as if she 
were just from the docks, " not a bolt nor a rivet out of place." 



58o History of the Republic since the Civil War 



his position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to become the 
lieutenant colonel of the Rough Riders. In a spirited attack, 
through tangled jungles and over rough fields strung with wire 
fences, the American troops charged up the heights of San 
Juan and El Caney in the face of a galling fire from the 
Spanish Mauser rifles, and intrenched themselves on the hills 
to the east of Santiago (July i, 2). But General Shafter found 
^ . _ the defenses of the city too 

strong, and notified Washing- 
ton that he should need re- 
enforcements to drive Gen- 
eral Toral from Santiago. 
It was a critical position in 
which the litde American 
army found itself Sunday 
morning, July 3, on the hills 
above Santiago. Reenforce- 
ments would be weeks in 
reaching them. Their sup- 
plies were inadequate and 
bad.^ The dreaded fever had 
already broken out among 
them. And Cervera's powerful fleet in the harbor below could 
easily drive them from the heights by a well-directed fire. 
817. The But fortune favored our cause. That same Sunday morning 

o?santtagot the Spanish ships steamed out of the harbor and started to run 
July 3, 1898 westward along the southern shore of Cuba, the flagship 
Maria Theresa leading, and the Vizcaya, the Colb7i, the Oquendo, 
' and the destroyers following. Admiral Sampson, with his flag- 
ship, the New York, was absent for the moment conferring with 
General Shafter on the critical situation of the American army. 
Commodore Schley, on the Brooklyn, was left as ranking officer. 

1 The inadequacy of the War Department, under Secretary Alger, was a strik- 
ing contrast to the efficiency of the Navy Department. The soldiers were 
supplied with heavy clothing for the hot Cuban campaign, and with inferior 
canned meats, which General Miles called " embalmed beef." 




The Blockhouse at El Caney, 
riddled v^^ith bullets 



Enteri7ig the Twentieth Centttry 581 

Following Sampson's orders, the American ships closed in on 
the Spaniards, and followed them in a wild chase along the 
coast, pouring a deadly fire into them all the while. The 
Spaniards replied, as at Manila, with a rapid but ineffectual dis- 
charge. One by one the Spanish cruisers, disabled or in flames, 
turned and headed for the breakers, until the last of them, the 
Cristobal Col6?i, bearing the proud name of the man who four 
centuries earlier had discovered for Spain the hemisphere whose 
last remnant was now slipping from her grasp, was beached by 
the relentless fire of the Brooklyn and the Oregon^ forty-five 
miles west of the harbor of Santiago. Only one man was killed 
and one seriously wounded in the American fleet, while less than 
$10,000 repaired all the damage done by the Spanish guns. But 
the enemy's fleet was completely destroyed, over 500 officers 
and men were killed, wounded, or drowned, and 1700 taken 
prisoners. The Spanish loss would have been far greater had 
not the American sailors rescued hundreds of their foemen, 
including the brave Admiral Cervera himself, from the burning 
decks and the wreck-strewn waters. A few days later General 
Toral surrendered the city of Santiago, now at the mercy of 
Sampson's guns, and turned over his army as prisoners of war 
to General Shafter (July 17). 

The total loss of two fleets and an army brought Spain to 818. The 
r r^-, -,- • • r 1 r ' capture of 

sue for terms. The prelimmaries for the treaty 01 peace were Manila, 

signed in Washington and hostilities were suspended August 12. ^^^^^ ^^' 

News of the peace reached Porto Rico just in time to stop 

General Miles's advance against the Spanish forces, and the 

governor of Porto Rico immediately surrendered the island to 

the American army. But before the news of peace reached the 

distant Philippines an event of great importance had occurred 

there. Three "relief expeditions," comprising over 10,00.0 

troops, had reached the Philippines from San Francisco by the 

end of July, and on August 13 these troops, supported by 

Dewey's squadron, took the city of Manila and raised the 

American flag over the governor's palace. 



582 History of tJie Republic since tJie Civil War 



819. Emilio 
Aguinaldo 



820, Peace 
with Spain, 
December 10, 
1898 



Then the situation began to grow complicated. The Filipinos 
had been in revolt against Spain at the same time as the Cubans. 
In 1897 the Spaniards had bought off the leaders of the revolt, 
including one Emilio Aguinaldo, with a promise of $1,000,000. 
Aguinaldo had retired to Singapore. While at Hongkong, Dewey 
had welcomed Aguinaldo as an ally, and later had him conveyed 
back to the Philippines on an American ship, and furnished him 
with arms from the arsenal at Cavite. The Filipino troops had 
entered Manila w^ith the Americans on August 13. Aguinaldo 
now claimed that Dewey had promised to turn the Philippines 
over to him when the power of Spain was crushed, but there is 
no evidence that Dewey ever made such a promise. He was 
too discreet a man to think of putting the American fleet at the 
disposal of a tropical insurgent. Aguinaldo refused to be con- 
sidered merely as the ally of the American troops, and although 
he yielded under superior force to the American general's 
order to withdraw from the city of Manila (September 15), he 
still conducted himself as the ruler of the Islands. He organized 
a Filipino republic, had himself proclaimed dictator, and pre- 
pared to maintain his position by force of arms. 

So the American and the Filipino troops were facing each 
other in ill-concealed hostility near Manila, when the terms of 
peace between Spain and the United States were signed at 
Paris, December 10, 1898. Spain agreed to withdraw from 
Cuba and to cede Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands 
to the United States. As the war had been begun for the 
liberation of Cuba, and as the city of Manila had not been 
taken until the day after the peace preliminaries w^ere signed 
and hostilities suspended, the Spanish commissioners at Paris 
were unwilling to have the Philippines included in the peace 
negotiations at all. But President McKinley and his advisers 
saw good reasons why we should remain in the Islands,^ and 

iTo hand back the Philippines to Spain, so argued the administration, 
would mean to give the Filipinos over to the very misrule and vengeance from 
•which we were saving the Cubans ; to withdraw our troops would mean to 
leave the Islands a prey to internal dissensions or to some strong European 



Enteri?ig the Twentieth Cejitiny 583 

Spain consented finally to give them up for an indemnity of 
$20,000,000. 

Before the treaty was ratified by the United States Senate 821. The 
or the Spanish Cortes, President McKinley ordered General ^isurrectfon 
Otis, commanding at Manila, to extend the authority of the 1899-1902 
United States over all the island of Luzon, and the Filipino 
Congress replied by authorizing Aguinaldo to make war on the 
American troops. It came to a battle ~ before Manila on 
February 4, 1899. The superior quality and training of the 
American army made victory over the Filipinos in the open 
field of battle very easy ; but when the Filipinos took to a 
guerrilla warfare among their native swamps and jungles, the 
wearying task of subjugating them dragged on for more than 
two years. Even the tricky seizure of Aguinaldo himself in his 
mountain retreat by a party of American scouts disguised as 
insurgents (February, 1901), and his proclamation two months 
later acknowledging American sovereignty in the Islands, did 
not end the insurrection. It was not until April, 1902, that 
the last insurgent leader surrendered and the Philippines were 
officially declared "pacified." 

The two years' war in the Philippines was carried on against 822. The ' 
the vigorous protest of a number of the recognized leaders of aUst's^*"^^"" 
political and ethical thought in America. These men were 
called '' anti-imperialists," because they saw in the acquisition 
of tropical colonies, which could never become states of the 
Union, and in the war to subjugate the native inhabitants of 
those colonies, the abandonment of the principles of freedom 
and self-government on which our republic was founded. 
President McKinley was invested by Congress (March 2, 1901) 
with " all the military, civil, and judicial powers necessary to 
govern the Philippine Islands," — an authority like that of a 
Roman Emperor rather than of the President of a free 
republic. Our army was rapidly increased fivefold in the 

power. Besides, our trade interests in China and Japan called us to take a strong 
position in the Orient. 



584 Histo7'y of the Republic sijtce the Civil War 

Islands (from 10,000 troops in August, 1898, to 54,000 in 
May, 1900), and during the severest period of the insurrection 
(May, 1900-June, 1901) there were 1026 "contacts," or petty 
battles, with a loss to the Americans of about 1000 men 
killed, wounded, and missing. Moreover, the exasperating 
method of guerrilla fighting practiced by the Filipinos, with its 
barbarous details of ambush, murder, treachery, and torture, 
tempted the American soldiers to resort at times to undue 
cruelty. The whole business was sickening, even to those who 
believed that it had to be done with all the unrelenting firmness 
that our generals displayed ; while the anti-imperialists taunted 
■ the administration with having converted the war, which was 
begun as a noble crusade for the liberation of the Cuban, 
into a diabolical campaign for the enslavement of the Filipino. 

823. The ad- For all that, the country at large supported the policy of the 
indor^s^edTn^ McKinley administration. The election of 1900, held during 
the election ^^ insurrection, was fought chiefly on the issue of " imper- 
ialism," ^ and McKinley defeated Bryan by 292 electoral votes 
to 155, with a popular majority of nearly 1,000,000. The vote 
was the verdict of the American people that the situation in the 
Philippines must be accepted as our " manifest destiny," or, in the 
words of Senator Spooner, as " one of the bitter fruits of war." 

824. Our gov- President McKinley used his extraordinary powers of govern- 
the'phiiip- ment in the Philippines with admirable moderation and wisdom, 
pines ^g soon as the force of the insurrection was broken, he appointed 

Judge William H. Taft as civil governor (July 4, 1901), with a 
commission of four other experts, to administer the depart- 
ments of commerce, public works, justice, finance, and education 
in the Islands. Native Filipinos were given a share in the local 
government of the provinces, and three Filipino members were 
soon added to the commission. Under Governor Taft's strong 

lAt the Democratic national convention at Kansas City, large placards 
were displayed with the inscription : " Lincoln abolished slavery. McKinley has 
restored it." A huge American flag was floated from the roof girders of the 
convention hall, edged with the motto, " The flag of the republic forever, of an 
empire never." 



Entering the Twentieth Cejttuiy 



58S 



and sympathetic administration the Islands recovered rapidly 
from the effects of the war. Roads and bridges were built, 
harbors and rivers improved, modern methods of agriculture 
introduced, commerce and industry stimulated. The American 
government purchased of the friars some 400,000 acres of 
Church lands for $7,200,000, which it sold to the natives on 
easy terms ; and sent hundreds of teachers to the Philippines to 
organize a system of modern education. A census of the 
Islands was completed in 1905, showing a population of 
7,635,426, of whom 647,740 
belonged to savage, or 
" head-hunting," tribes. Two 
years after the census was 
taken, an election was held 
for a Philippine National As- 
sembly, to share, as a lower 
House, with the commission 
appointed by the President 
in the government of the 
Islands. The Assembly con- 
vened in October, 1907, ex- 
Governor Taft (then Secre- 
tary of War) visiting the 
Orient to assist at the in- 
augural ceremonies. The professed policy of the Republican 
party, which has been in power ever since the Spanish War, 
is to give the Filipinos self-government and independence 
'' when they are fit for it "; but there is little likelihood that 
having once learned the difficult and expensive art of colonial 
government ^ we shall part with so rich and populous a domain 
as the Philippine Islands, or that, having entered with the 

1 Secretary of War Root estimated that the cost of the acquisition of the 
Philippines (1898-1902) was $169,853,512, exclusive of the $20,000,000 purchase 
money. Mr. Edward Atkinson, a distinguished authority on economics and the 
leader of the anti-imperialists, claimed that $1,000,000,000 is not too high an 
estimate of the cost of the Islands to the United States up to 1904. 




A Filipino Girl weaving 



586 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



825. The 
organization 
of the Cuban 
republic, 
i9cx>-igoi 



826. Porto 
Rico a colo- 
nial territory 



European nations into the game of world politics we shall 
abandon one of the finest strategic posts in the Far East. 

The reorganization of Cuba proceeded more smoothly. On 
January i, 1899, Spain withdrew her civil and military authority 
from the island, leaving it under a military governor appointed 
by President McKinley. In November, 1900, a convention of 
Cubans drew up a constitution for a republic, closely patterned 
on that of the United States. Congress established a mild sort 
of " protectorate " over Cuba by compelling the convention to 
incorporate in the constitution certain clauses known as the 
" Platt_Amendment.'' They provided (i) that Cuba should 
never permit any foreign power to colonize or control any 
part of the island, or impair in any way its independence; 
(2) that Cuba should not incur any debt which the ordinary 
revenues of the island could not carry; (3) that Cuba should 
sell or lease certain coaling stations to the United States; 
and (4) that we might intervene in Cuba, if necessary, to 
maintain a government adequate for the protection of life, 
property, and individual liberty. When the Piatt Amendment 
was duly adopted, the Cubans were allowed to proceed with 
their elections. On May 20, 1902, General Wood turned the gov- 
ernment of the island over to its first president, Estrada^ Palma, 
and. Cuba took her place among the republics of the world. ^ ~" 

Porto Rico was organized (April, 1900) as a sort of com- 
promise between a colony and a territory of the United States. 
A governor and a council of eleven (including five Porto 
Ricans) are appointed by the President, and a legislature of 35 
members is elected by the natives. The council has full charge 
of the administration of the island, and sitting as an upper 

1 Under the Piatt Amendment we were obliged to take temporary charge 
of the government of Cuba from 1906 to 1909 on account of factional strife 
in the island and the resignation of President Palma. We have rendered ines- 
timable services to Cuba in the way of education and sanitation. Yellow fever, 
formerly the scourge of the island, has been stamped out, and Havana has been 
converted from one of the filthiest and deadliest cities of the Western Hemi- 
sphere to one of the cleanest and most sanitary. We spent over ^10,000,000 in 
the sanitation of Cuba. 



Entering the Tiventieth Century 587 

House can veto the acts of the native legislature. The island, 
while under the protection of our laws and forming a customs 
district of the United States, does not enjoy complete self- 
government or have the prospect of becoming a state in the 
Union. Its million inhabitants of mixed Spanish, Indian, and 
negro blood are not qualified for the responsibilities of an 
American commonwealth. 

Thus while our flag was raised in the West Indies and in the 827. The 
distant islands of the Pacific, our Constitution was not extended does^not "^foi< 
in full force to the new possessions. Congress, as we have seen, ^^^ ^^® ^^s " 
turned the administration of the Philippines over absolutely to 
President McKinley, and devised a new form of government for 
Porto Rico. Furtheniiore, by the famous " Insular Cases " of 
May, 1 90 1, the Supreme Court decided that Congress might im- 
pose a tariff duty on the products coming from those posses- 
sions, thus treating them as foreign countries.-^ , 

The Spanish War, with the resultant acquisition of colonial 828. The 

^^ j_ • 1 ' ^ 1 . Spanish War 

possessions m the tropics, marks a momentous epoch m our an epoch in 

history. During the twenty-five years preceding the McKinley """^ history 
administration our State Department played but a minor role. 
The question of the seal fisheries in Bering Sea, or of the control 
of a half-civilized king in the Samoan Islands, on which Blaine 
exercised his vigorous ability, seem rather petty now ; and even 
the serious Venezuelan boundary dispute with Great Britain was 
only an episode in the great absorbing questioi'is of finance, the 
tariff, and labor agitation, which filled the second administra- 
tion of Grover Cleveland. But with the closing years of the 

1 The refusal of Congress, at the dictation of the sugar and toba(;t;o trusts, to 
admit the Cuban and Philippine products free of duty has retarded the develop- 
ment of those islands considerably and counterbalanced much of the good work 
done by our administrators, engineers, and educators there. In 1903 President 
Roosevelt induced Congress to make a 20 per cent reduction in the Cuban sugar 
tariff ; and, as a result, our trade with Cuba grew from ^60,000,000 in 1902 to 
^124,000,000 in 1905. Under President Taft's insistent efforts Congress finally 
(by the Payne-Aldrich Bill of 1909) granted the Philippines free trade in all prod- 
ucts except rice, sugar, and tobacco, and allowed even considerable amounts of 
the last two commodities to come in free of duty. 



5S8 History of tJie Rcpiihlic since tJie Civil War 



centur)- the nation turned to new fields. Our amiy and navy 
became conspicuous, and began to absorb appropriations reach- 
ing into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Our atten- 
tion was drawn to the interests of colonizing nations, the trade 
of distant lands, and the fate of the old empires of the East. 
Our new possessions in the Pacific and our concern in the 




For PAST \\^\RS 

and ^ 

PREPARATION ' 

FOR,W^AR> 1 



L$45 



opoopoo \ 

or 





$ 



for all other 
purposes 1 

195,000,000 
or 



The Cost of Wari 
How our national income of $643,000,000 was spent in 1910 

Orient gave gi-eat impetus to the development of our west- 
em coast, and made imperative the immediate construction 
of the long-planned canal through the Isthmus of Panama. 
England had been our traditional enemy since the days of the 
Revolutionar)' \\'ar, but her cordial support of our cause in 
the war with Spain, when all the other nations of western 

1 The cost of armed peace in the eight years 1902-1910 increased by more 
than Si, 000,000,000 over the cost in the eight years preceding the Spanish 
War. This eight-year increase exceeds the national debt by over $150,000,000; 
exceeds the entire budget of the United States for the year 1910-1911 ; is over 
double the estimated cost of replanting the 56.000,000 acres of denuded forest 
lands in the United States : is nearly three times the estimated cost of the 
Panama Canal. What we spend in a single year on the engines of war would 
go far toward crushing out the " white plague " of consumption, which destroys 
a hundred thousand lives in our land every year. 



Entering the Twentieth Century 589 

Europe desired and predicted a Spanish victory/ won our 
hearty friendship, and roused in the breasts of statesmen of 
both countries the prophetic hope that the two great English- 
speaking nations should henceforth unite their efforts for the 
maintenance of world peace.^ 

Only a few months after the ratification of the treaty with 829. our in- 
Spain there came a striking proof of our new position in the parEast" '^^'' 
affairs of the world. An association of men in China known as The Boxer 
the '' Boxers," resenting the growth of foreign influence in their 
country, gained control of the territory about Peking in the sum- 
mer of 1900, and, with the secret sympathy of the Empress Dow- 
ager of China and many of the high officials, inaugurated a reign 
of terror. The foreign legations were cut off, and the German 
minister was murdered in broad daylight in the street. The rest 
of the foreign diplomats, with their staffs and their families, to the 
number of four hundred, took refuge in the British legation, 
where they were besieged for two months by a force of several 
thousand armed men, including troops from the imperial army. 
Sixty-five of the besieged party were killed and 135 wounded 
before the relief army, composed of American, British, French, 
German, Italian, and Japanese troops, fought its way up from 
the coast and captured the city of Peking. We were in a posi- 
tion, by virtue of our occupation of the Philippines, to furnish 
5000 troops promptly and to take a leading part in the rescue of 
the legations at Peking ; and when our able Secretary of State, 
John Hay, took the initiative in dealing with the question of 

1 The friendly spirit of England was especially shown in the conduct of the 
fleets in Manila bay. The German admiral, Von Diederich, hectored Dewey by 
unfriendly demonstrations, and would have effected a combination of the Euro- 
pean warships to attempt to drive Dewey from the bay or to frustrate his bombard- 
ment of Manila, had not the British admiral openly declared his sympathy for 
the American cause. When the ne\vs of Dewey's victory reached London, 
American flags were hung in the streets and ''The Star Spangled Banner" was 
played in the theaters and music halls. 

2 These cordial relations were still further strengthened by the signature at 
Washington, August 3, 1911, of a treaty providing for reference to a tribunal of 
arbitration of disputes unsolved by diplomacy. But the Senate rejected the terms 
of this treaty, March 7, 1912. 



590 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

the adjustment of the outrage and the punishment of China, he 
won the respectful cooperation of the courts of Europe.^ 

830. Anew At the same time that they opened these new vistas of our 
domestic ° national destiny the closing years of the century seemed to settle 
problems many of the domestic problems which had vexed us since the 

Civil War. The Dingley tariff bill of 1897 quickly and quietly 
restored even the slight reduction made by the Wilson-Gorman 
Act of 1894, and fixed our tariff for a dozen years. The dis- 
covery of large deposits of gold in the Klondike region of Alaska 
in August, 1896 (at the very moment when Mr. Bryan was mak- 
ing his whirlwind campaign for free silver), together with the 
opening of new gold mines in South Africa, expanded the volume 
of the world's currency sufficiently to make silver coinage a dead 
issue. A marvelous burst of industrial activity following the 
Spanish War, combined with abundant corn and wheat crops, 
gave employment to thousands who were out of work, and 
enabled the farmers of the ^^'est in many cases to pay off their 
mortgages and have a balance left with which to buy automobiles. 
Finally, the Spanish War healed the last traces of ill feeling be- 
tween North and South, when the men from Dixie and the men 
from Yankee land fought shoulder to shoulder under Colonel 
Roosevelt of New York or '' little Joe " Wheeler of Alabama. 

831. The For better or worse we had begun a new policy of expansion 
among the^^^ ^^i^ entered into the race for colonial supremacy and world trade, 
world powers After warning the nations of Europe away from the Western 

Hemisphere for nearly a century, we had now ourselves seized on 
possessions in the Eastern Hemisphere. We had inaugurated gov- 
ernments strange to the letter and the spirit of our Constitution. 

1 The aged senator, John Sherman, was made Secretar}' of State by McKinley 
to make a place in the Senate for " Mark " Hanna. Sherman was unable to man- 
age the trjdng negotiations with Spain and gave way to Judge Day, who in turn 
resigned, to head the Peace Commission in Paris, December, 1898. John Hay, 
imbassador to England, succeeded him, and proved to be one of the ablest, if 
;he ablest, of our Secretaries of State. His wisdom and tact preser\^ed the 
;rity of the Chinese Empire, with the principle of the " open door." or equal 
: privileges for all nations, at a time when the European powers were ready in 
r and revenge to break up the empire and unchain war in the East. 



Entering the Tzventieth Ce7ttnry 591 

We had voted down by large majorities the counsel of the men 
who urged us to return to the old order, and had accepted as 
the call of our " manifest destiny " the summons to " enlarge 
the place of our habitation." We had no longer the choice 
whether or not we should play a great part in the events of 
the world. The only question was, in the words of Theodore 
Roosevelt, '' whether we should play that part well or ill." 

The Roosevelt Policies 

When President McKinley was inaugurated a second time, 832. our 
on March 4, 1901, the country was at the flood tide of pros- fhe^open^g^ 
perity. Capital, which was timidly hoarded during the uncertain °^ ^^® twen- 
years of Cleveland's administration, had come out of hiding at 
the call of Hanna and the other '' advance agents of prosperity." 
The alliance between politics and business was cemented. Trusts 
were organized w^ith amazing rapidity and on an enormous scale. 
Up to the Spanish War there existed only about 60 of these 
great business combinations with a capital ranging from $1,000,- 
000 to $5,000,000, but the years 1899-190 1 saw the formation 
of 183 new trusts with a total capitalization of $4,000,000,000, 
— an amount of money equal to one twentieth of the total wealth 
of the United vStates, and four times the combined capital of all 
the corporations organized between the Civil War and Cleveland's 
second administration. 

The statistics published from year to year by our Census and 
Treasury Bureaus revealed such gains in population, production, 
and commerce that the imagination was taxed to grasp the 
figures, and even the most sanguine prophecies of prosperity 
were in a few months surpassed by the facts. From the in- 
auguration of Washington to the inauguration of McKinley the 
excess of our exports over our imports was $356,000,000, 
but in a single year of McKinley's administration the excess 
reached $664,000,000. By the end of the nineteenth century 
we were mining 230,000,000 of the 720,000,000 tons of the 



592 Hist 07'}' of the RepiLblic 



the Civil War 



833. The 
assassination 
of McKinley, 
September 6, 
igoi 



world's coal, 25,000,000 
257,000 of its 470,000 
increasing our lead over 



of its 79,000,000 tons of iron, and 
tons of copper, and were steadily 
all other countries in the production 






and export of wheat, com, and cotton. During the whole of 
the nineteenth centurv* we had been a debtor nation, inviting 
the capital of Europe to aid in the development of our great 

domain, and pa\-ing our ob- 
ligations abroad from the 
}-ield of our Western fields ; 
but now our land was occu- 
pied, our resources exploited, 
and our industrial position 
assured. We began to ex- 
port great quantities of man- 
ufactured goods and to seek 
new markets in the far 
comers of the earth. We 
bought the bonds of China 
and Japan. We sold millions 
of dollars' worth of our in- 
dustrial stocks to Europe. 
The king of England re- 
ceived more money annually 
in interest from his private 
investments in American se- 






i:^L. 






7i*rnv^ 



/<^^*<^-^- 



Facsimile of the Title-page of an 
Act of Congress 



curities at the beginning of the twentieth century than George 
the Third had been able to wring from the thirteen colonies by 
taxation. 

The progress of the United States and her sister republics of 
Central and South America was celebrated by a Pan-American 
Exposition held at Buffalo in the summer of 190 1. President 
McKinley attended the exposition, and in a noble speech, on 
the fifth of September, outlined the policy of friendly trade and 
reciprocal good will which we should cultivate with the nations 
of the world. It was his last public utterance. The next day, 



Enteiing the Twentieth Century 



593 



as he was holding a reception, he was shot by a miserable 
anarchist named Czolgosz, whose brain had been inflamed 
by reading the tirades of the '' yellow press " against '' Czar 
McKinley." After a week of patient suffering the President 

died, — the third victim 
of the assassin's bullet 
since the Civil War. 

The lamented McKin- 834. Theo- 
ley was succeeded in the J^Jt' """"''" 
presidency by a man who, 
for the last decade, has 
filled the stage of our public 
life more completely and 
conspicuously than any 
other American, and who 
to-day is probably the best 
known man of the civilized 
world. Theodore Roose- 
velt was born in New York 
City, October 27, 1858, of 
sturdy Dutch stock. After 
graduating at Harvard 
in the class of 1880, he 
entered the legislature of 
his state. He was a dele- 
gate to the famous Re- 
publican national conven- 
tion of 1884, where he opposed the nomination of James G. 
Blaine, but he did not '' bolt " the ticket with the Mugwumps 
to vote for Cleveland. The next two years he spent on a ranch 
in North Dakota, strengthening his rather feeble health, satis- 
fying his longing for the free, vigorous life of the plains and 
his intense love of nature, and at the same time gaining that 
appreciation of the value of our great Western domain which 
has so conspicuously influenced his public administration. He 




Copyright by He 



Theodore Roosevelt 



594 History of the Republic siiice tJie Civil Wa7- 



835. Roose- 
velt's concep- 
tion of the 
presidency 



was appointed to the Civil Sendee Commission by President 
Harrison in 1SS9, where he showed his devotion to clean and 
honest politics by greatly enlarging the '' merit system '' of ap- 
pointment to office.-^ We have already seen how he resigned 
his assistant secretar)'ship of the navy in 1898 to accept the 
lieutenant-colonelcy of the Rough Riders in the Spanish War. 
Returning to New York with the popularit}' of a military- hero 
he was chosen governor of the Empire State in the November 
election. As governor ]Mr. Roosevelt set too high a staiidard 
of official morality to please the leaders of the Republican ma- 
chine, and they craftily planned to " shelve " him by " promot- 
ing " him to the vice presidency, — an office of considerable 
dignitv, but of practically no influence or responsibility. Against 
his determined and even tearful protest the Philadelphia conven- 
tion of 1900, by a unanimous vote, placed his name on the pres- 
idential ticket with McKinley's. The politicians of New York 
considered Governor Roosevelt '' laid in his political grave." 
But his resurrection was speedy. Less than a year after his 
election to the vice presidency he was called on to take the 
oath as President of the United States (September 14, 1901). 

On the day of his inauguration President Roosevelt an- 
nounced his intention of carrying out the policies of his pred- 
ecessor, and gave an earnest of his statement by requesting the 
cabinet officers to retain their portfolios. But the seasoned 
old politicians at Washington and the shrewd bankers in Wall 
Street were apprehensive lest " this young man " of forty-two, 
with his self-assurance, his independence, his dauntless courage, 
and his unquenchable idealism, should disturb the well-oiled ma- 
chinery of the '' business man's government " and play havoc 
with the stock market. They soon discovered that they had in 

1 During Roosevelt's six years on the commission (1SS9-1S95) the offices 
under the classified civil ser\-ice were increased from 14.000 to 40,000. A great 
part of the voluminous annual reports of the commission (VI to XI) was written 
by Mr. Roosevelt, besides numerous magazine articles in support of the merit 
system. When he resigned his office in 1S95 to become president of the New 
York police board, President Cleveland congratulated him on " the extent and 
permanence of the reform methods " he had brought about in the civil service. 



Entering the Tzuentieth Century 595 

Roosevelt a President who, like Grover Cleveland, interpreted 
his oath to " preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of 
the United States " to mean not waiting docilely in the White 
House for bills to come from the Capitol, but initiating, direct- 
ing, and restraining the legislation of Congress, in the name and 
interest of the great American people, whose representative 
he was. 

In his first message to Congress, December 3, 1901, — a very 836. Roose- 
long and very able state paper, — Roosevelt demanded more nuaim^ssage' 
than a dozen important '' reform " measures, and sounded the i^ecember 3, 
keynote of his entire administration. He recommended that 
the federal government assume power of supervision and 
regulation over all corporations doing an interstate busi- 
ness ; that a new Department of Commerce be created, with a 
Secretary in the President's cabinet; that the Interstate Com- 
merce Act be amended so as to prevent shippers from receiv- 
ing special rates from the railroads ; that the Cuban tariff be 
lowered ; that the President be given power to transfer public 
lands to the Department of Agriculture, to be held as forest 
reserves ; that the navy be strengthened by several new battle- 
ships and heavy-armored cruisers ; that the civil service be 
extended to all offices in the District of Columbia; and that 
the federal government inaugurate, at the public expense, a 
huge system of reservoirs and canals for the irrigation of our 
arid lands in the West. Besides making these specific recom- 
mendations. President Roosevelt discussed " anarchy," the 
trusts, the labor question, immigration, the tariff, our merchant 
marine, the Monroe Doctrine, civil service reform, and our 
duty toward our new possessions. 

The energetic President traveled through the various states, 837. Roose- 
. . , . ,. . . ,1. 1 J • • velt's popu- 

emphasizmg his policies in many pubhc speeches, and winning i^rity 

immense popularity in every section of the country. He spoke in 

plain, vigorous language on all subjects in which he himself, as a 

virile, courageous, democratic American citizen, was interested, 

from the government of our foreign colonies and the control of 



$96 History of the Republic si7ice the Civil War 



838. His atti- 
tude toward 
the great 
corporations 



our domestic industries to the choice of an occupation and 
the training of a family. He popularized the expressions 
" the criminal rich," '' the square deal," " clean as a hound's 
tooth," and made the rare adjective " strenuous " one of the 
commonest in our vocabulary. He showed little regard for 
precedent or the staid decorum of official propriety when it 
was a question of performing what he regarded as a fair 
or useful act. In spite of the hostile criticism of almost the 

entire South, he appointed an 
efficient colored man collector of 
the port of Charleston. When a 
severe strike in the anthracite 
mines of Pennsylvania brought on 
a coal famine in the summer of 
1902, and threatened to cause un- 
told suffering during the follow- 
ing winter, the President called to- 
gether representatives of the miners 
and of the owners of the coal fields, 
in a conference at the White House, 
and prevailed upon them to submit 
their dispute to the arbitration of a 
commission which he appointed. 
There is no phrase in the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, in the 
definition of the President's powers and duties, that could be 
interpreted as giving him the right to intervene in a dispute 
between capital and labor. But he did intervene for the relief 
of millions of his anxious fellow countrymen ; and no public 
act ever brought him a greater or more deserved reward of 
praise. 

Recognizing that great combinations of capital were inevitable, 
and that the corporation, or trust, was a necessary instrument of 
modern industry, he repeatedly declared that no honest business 
had anything to fear from his administration. At the same time he 




John Mitchell 

President of the United Mine 
Workers of America 



Entering the Tzventieth Century 597 

insisted that those corporations which practically monopolized 
such necessities of life as coal, oil, beef, and sugar, or, like the 
railroads, had received invaluable public franchises in return for 
services to be rendered to the public, should not be allowed to 
reap fabulous profits by charging exorbitant prices or by securing 
illegal privileges through the bribery of legislatures, but should 
be subject to proper regulation by the government. Therefore 
he directed his attorney-general to commence over forty suits 
against railroads or industrial corporations during his adminis- 
tration. The government won but few of these actions, but 
the indirect effect of what was popularly called " busting the 
trusts " was highly beneficial. It aroused public sentiment on 
the most important economic problem confronting our nation. 

Toward labor President Roosevelt was sympathetic. As a 839. msatti- 
worker himself, he had great respect for the men who go down ^^^ oward 
into the mines, or drive the locomotive across the plains of the 
West. He believed in the right of labor to organize in unions 
for the sake of preserving the quality of its output and of 
making its demands on the capitalist employer more effective 
by collective bargaining. He recognized the justice of the strike 
when no other form of action was able to secure a '' square 
deal" for the worker. He declared that the injunction without 
notice was an unjust restraint against organized labor.^ But 
violence or wanton destruction of property or interference with 
the liberty of any man to work where and when he chose, he 
condemned as a violation of the law ; and lawlessness he con- 
sidered just as intolerable in the strikers who burned freight 
cars as in the directors who doctored freight rates. 

In his first message to Congress President Roosevelt spoke 840. Hiscon- 
with the eloquence of a true lover of nature of the need of pre- po5fcV°° 
serving our forest domain. It was, in his opinion, " the most vital 
internal question of the United States." We have seen (p. 512) 
how lavishly our government disposed of its unoccupied lands in 
the days when they were believed to be inexhaustible. Andrew 

1 See note, p. 564. 



598 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

Johnson soberly calculated that it would take six hundred years 
for our great West to '' fill in " ; but twenty-two years after he 
left the presidential chair (189 1) the menace of the exhaustion 
of our forest domains from reckless and wasteful cutting was 
so great that Congress authorized the President, at his discretion, 
to withdraw timber lands from entry for public sale. Roosevelt 
got Congress to extend the same authorization to mineral lands, 
and withdrew from sale over 100,000 acres of coal fields in 
Alaska. Altogether Roosevelt's proclamation brought the area 
of our reserved forest and mineral lands up to more than 150,- 
000,000 acres, — a tract larger than France and the Nether- 
lands combined. Had our government adopted this wise policy a 
generation earlier, it would have been able to-day to draw from 
its sales of timber and water power, its leases of coal and oil 
lands, a revenue sufficient to run the federal government with- 
out the imposition of a tariff, which hampers foreign trade, taxes 
the laboring man on almost every necessity of life, and by its 
protective clauses still further enriches the corporations which 
have seized on the natural resources of our opulent country.-' 
President Roosevelt put the crowning stone on his splendid work 
for the conservation of our natural resources when he invited 
the governors of all the states to a conference at the White 
House, in May, 1908, to outline a uniform policy of preservation. 
841. The For his irrigation policy the President secured, in June, 1902, 

the arid West the passage of a Reclamation Act, by which the proceeds from 
the sale of public lands in sixteen mining and grazing states and 
territories of the West (the so-called " cowboy states ") should go 
into a special irrigation fund instead of into the public treasury. 

1 The iron deposits of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota alone, including 
the famous Vermilion, Menominee, and Mesabi ranges, which furnish 88 pet 
cent of the ore of the country, are estimated by the United States Steel Corpo- 
ration, whose property they are, to be worth over ^i,ooo,oop,ooo. By the census 
of 1900, 200,000,000 of the 800,000,000 cultivable acres of the United States 
are owned by 47,000 people, — the population of a fourth-rate Eastern city. The 
mineral output of the country is worth over fia, 000,000,000 a year. A government 
royalty of 15 per cent on this sum would yield a revenue equal to that collected 
from our high tariff. 



Entering the Twentieth Centnry 



599 



The irrigated lands were to be sold to settlers at moderate 
prices, on a ten-year installment plan, the proceeds going con- 
stantly to renew the fund. Under the beneficial operation of 
this law large tracts of land, formerly worth only a cent or two 
an acre for cattle grazing, have already become worth several 
hundred dollars an acre for agriculture ; and one may see in the 




^. ..._, J^.-- 







" "'"!fe?^ 



-^J_^.a?v-i:i-s ^r^'> 






The Roosevelt Dam, Arizona 
A monument of the consen-ation policy 

Eastern markets apples, four or five inches in diameter, grown 
on Arizona farms which, ten years ago, were sandy wastes 
covered with coarse, scrubby grass or "sagebrush." It is not 
unlikely that future generations, looking back on Theodore 
Roosevelt's work, will rank his part in the conservation and 
redemption of our Western lands as his greatest service to the 
American republic. 



842. The 
Panama Canal 



600 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

Under the Roosevelt administration work was begun on the 
greatest piece of engineering ever undertaken in America, — 
the Panama Canal. Since the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850, 
the piercing of the Isthmus of Panama had been contemplated ; 
and after a French company, organized by the successful builder 
of the Suez Canal, Ferdinand de Lesseps, had begun work at 
Panama (188 1), various American companies began to make 
estimates for a route across Nicaragua. The Spanish War, with 
its serious lesson of the 14,000-mile voyage that had to be taken 



K 


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Length of Canal 49.8 milea 


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Canal Zone"+-+-+ 







The Republic of Panama 



by the Oregon to get from one side of our country to the other, 
and with the new responsibilities which it brought by the acqui- 
sition of colonies in the Pacific Ocean and the West Indies, 
showed the necessity of the immediate construction of the canal. 
As a preliminary. Secretary Hay, in December, 1901, secured 
the abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty from the friendly 
British government, thereby allowing the United States to build 
and control an Isthmian canal alone. At the same time a com- 
mission which had been appointed to investigate the relative 
advantages of routes through Nicaragua and Panama reported 



Entering the Tiventicth Century 



60 1 



^/^RlBBElAN 5^^ 




"'C OCEAN 



Route of the Panama Canal 



in favor of the former. The 
French Panama Company, 
however, had failed as a re- 
sult of scandalous misman- 
agement and thieving, and 
was anxious to sell its rights 
and apparatus at Panama to 
the United States. After a 
warm fight over the two 
routes Congress voted, in 
June, 1902, that the canal 
should go through Panama 
if the President could secure 
the route ''within a reason- 
able time"; if not, it should 
go through Nicaragua. 

President Roosevelt had 843. The rev- 
no difficulty in buying out 
the French Panama Com- 
pany for $40,000,000. But 
when he tried to negotiate 
with Colombia (of which 
Panama was a province) for 
the right to build the canal, 
offering Colombia $10,000,- 
000 down and a rental of 
$250,000 a year for the con- 
trol of a strip of land six miles 
wide across the Isthmus (the 
liay-Herran Treaty), the 
Colombian Senate rejected 
the treaty (August 12, 1903). 
Both the United States and 



olution in 
Panama , 
November 3, 
1903 



the province of Panama were exasperated by this attempt of 
Colombia to hold back the world's progress by barring the 



6o2 History of the ReptLblic since tJie Civil War 

route across the Isthmus. Some rather high-handed diplomacy 
was conducted at Washington by secret agents from Panama, 
and when the Colombian Senate adjourned at the end of Octo- 
ber without having reconsidered its refusal, United States gun- 
boats were already hovering about the Isthmus with orders to let 
no armed force land on its soil. On the evening of November 3, 
a " quiet uprising " took place in Panama, under the protec- 
tion of our marines, and the Colombian authorities were politely 
shown from the province. Within a week the new republic of 
Panama had its accredited representative, Bunau-Varilla, in 
Washington, who resumed immediately the negotiations for the 
construction of the canal. The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, of 
November 18, 1903, with Panama was essentially the old Hay- 
Herran Treaty rejected by Colombia the preceding August, 
except that we bought a ten-mile strip outright from Panama.^ 
844. prob- The route decided on and the treaty secured, the work of exca- 
(xmstmction vation began in May, 1904. But there have been many difficult 
of the canal problems to meet at Panama, — the sanitation of the Isthmus, 
the importation of efficient laborers who could dig in the tropical 
climate, dissensions in the Canal Commission, the decision be- 
tween a lock or a sea-level canal, the testing of the soil for the 
locks and the big dam at Gatun, and the question of letting out 
the work by private contract or intrusting it to government en- 
gineers. In June, 1906, Congress determined on the high-fevel 
lock canal, and the next spring, after securing the bids of several 

1 The encouragement of the secession of Panama from Colombia has been 
called an "ineffaceable blot of dishonor" on the Roosevelt administration. It 
is certainly proved that the government at Washington was privy to the revolt 
in Panama, not only by the presence of our gunboats near the Isthmus, but also 
by a dispatch to Panama from acting Secretary of State Loomis, inquiring how 
the revolt was proceeding, several hours before it had broken out. It was of 
course necessary to have the canal, but we played the part of the wolf to the 
lamb toward Colombia. As Professor Coolidge says, we had as little regard for 
Colombia as a railroad company has for the claims of an Indian squatter along 
its line. Congress had consented only reluctantly to the Panama route, and 
President Roosevelt feared that if Congress met again (in December, 1903) 
before the Panama route was secured, it might vote that the " reasonable time " 
allowed for the acquisition of the route had expired, and go back to the Nica- 
raguan plan. 



Entering tJic Twentieth Centjiry 



003 



contractors, the President decided for government construction. 
The canal was ready for ships in the summer of 19 14. 

The tremendous advantages that will result from the open- 845. Benefits 
ing of the canal to the world's traffic may be judged from the "^ ^^® ^^°^^ 
following table of distances : ^ 



From 


To 


Distance at present 

(via Cape Horn 

or Suez) 


Distance via Pan- 
ama Canal 


Miles 
saved 


New York 
New York 
New York 
New York 
Havana 
San Francisco 


San Francisco 

Yokohama 

Panama 

Manila 

San Francisco 

London 


13.000 

13,000 
10,800 
13,000 
I 1 ,000 

I G,ooo 


5,200 
9,700 
2,000 
9,000 
5,000 
9,000 


7,800 
3'300 
8,800 
4,000 

6,000 
7,000 



The influence upon the republics of Central and South 846. our re- 
America of our presence at Panama and in the West Indies ihe south'^** 

will be increasingly felt. Till very recent years our attitude American 
^ ■' •' ■' republics 

toward those republics has been generally that of cold and 

distant friendship. Because we have been essentially a food- 
producing country like Brazil and Argentina and Chile, we have 
let England, France, and Germany have their trade.^ Of the 
$500,000,000 worth of goods that the South American repub- 
lics imported in 1900, the United States, their nearest and 
richest neighbor, sold them but $41,000,000 worth. But now 
that we have become a great manufacturing country, with ex- 
ports double our imports, we need the growing markets of 

1 The .Suez Canal, which was completed in 1869, was entirely paid for by the 
fees of vessels passing through in the first seven years. In 1869, 10 vessels 
passed through the canal paying ^10,000 in fees ; in 1904, over 4000 vessels paid 
fees of ^20,000,000. The shares which the British government bought in 1875 
for ^20, 000, 000 are now worth over ^150,000,000. The Panama Canal has been 
very expensive, costing about 3375,000,000, but the tolls will probably pay for it 
in less time than it has taken to build it. 

2 Elihu Root, when Secretary of State, returning from a Pan-American Con- 
gress at Rio Janeiro in the autumn of 1906, reported that the previous year there 
were seen in the harbor of that great Brazilian seaport 1785 ships flying the flag 
of Great Britain, 657 with the German flag, 349 with the French, 142 with the 
Norwegian, and seven sailing vessels (two of which were in distress) flying the 
Stars and Stripes. Our merchant marine is so scanty that such goods as we 
send to South America go via the European ports in European ships. 



6o4 History of the Republic 



the Civil War 



these southern republics for our agricultural implements, our 
electrical machinery, our steel rails and locomotives, our cotton, 
woolen, and leather goods. We have revived Blaine's fertile 
idea of the Pan-American congresses,^ and a Bureau of Ameri- 
can Republics has been organized at Washington to facilitate 
our cordial relations with the other American republics. 




A Steam Shovel at Work on the Canal 



847. Rocse- Coincident with this revival of interest in the Latin repub- 

sion of the°' ^'^^^ ^^ America came a very significant extension of the Monroe 

Doctrin Doctrine by President Roosevelt, when, in order to satisfy the 

European creditors of Santo Domingo, he appointed a receiver 

1 Such conferences were held in Mexico in 1901, in Rio Janeiro in 1906, and 
in Buenos Aires in 1910. Of this last congress Professor Shepherd of Columbia, 
its secretary, said : " The Conference will attempt to standardize certain customs 
and sanitary regulations, and to agree on uniform patent, trade-mark, and copy- 
right laws. It will do all it can to cement friendly relations, and perhaps arrange 
for exchanges of professorships and scholarships similar to the Roosevelt 
exchange professorship with Germany," 



E7itermg the Tiventieth Ce7it7cry 605 

to manage its bankrupt treasury. Heretofore we had only for- 
bidden Europe to step into the republics of the New World; 
now, at the request of Europe, we stepped in ourselves. If 
this principle is followed out, it must mean a virtual protectorate 
of the United States over all the weaker republics of the South, 
— a move which many '' expansionists " have long regarded as 
the logical and desirable outcome of the Monroe Doctrine. 

President Roosevelt's independence of sanctioned forms, his 848. Roose- 
attack on the evils of the corporations, his insistence on larger senate 
powers for the regulation of the railroads by the Interstate 
Commerce Commission, roused a good deal of opposition in 
Congress, and especially in the Senate. The Senate had been 
" scolded " by Roosevelt for not ratifying some reciprocity tariff 
■treaties which he had negotiated in accord with the policy of 
McKinley, and as the presidential year of 1904 approached, a 
movement was started to supplant him by Senator Hanna. But 
with the death of Hanna in February, 1904, the opposition 
collapsed, and Roosevelt was unanimously nominated for what 
was practically a second term. 

The Democratic convention at St. Louis came again into the 849. The 
hands of the conservatives, who had been beaten at Chicago ij^^^^°° °* 
eight years before. It nominated Alton B. Parker, chief judge 
of the New York Court of Appeal, who immediately made it 
clear by a telegram to St. Louis that he was inalterably pledged 
to the gold standard. His views were accepted by the conven- 
tion, in spite of Bryan's protest. Judge Parker was a man of 
the highest character and unquestioned ability, but he proved a 
veritable man of straw against Theodore Roosevelt. The Re- 
publicans won by the largest majority, both in the electoral vote 
(336 to 140) and in the popular vote (7,624,489 to 5,082,754), 
ever recorded in our history. Roosevelt carried every state 
north of Mason and Dixon's line, and even invaded the " solid 
South" by winning Missouri and Maryland. He announced 
on the evening of his victory that he would not be a candidate 
for renomination. 



850, Meas- 
ures of Roose- 
velt's second 
term 



606 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

After the popular indorsement of 1904 President Roosevelt 
intensified rather than relaxed his strenuous program. He se- 
cured the passage of the Hepburn Rate Bill, enlarging the con- 
trol of the Interstate Commerce Commission over the railroads, 
started suits against several trusts which were guilty of law- 
breaking, set on foot a thorough investigation of the meat- 
packing houses in Chicago, Omaha, and Kansas City,^ secured 
the passage of a pure food and drugs bill through Congress, 




The Peace Palace at The Hague 
Given by Andrew Carnegie 



greatly improved the consular service, pushed the work on the 
Panama Canal, urged the admission to statehood of the terri- 
tories of Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico, and waged 
a continual fight for the conservation of our forests and the 
redemption of our waste plains. 

1 Prompted by stcirtling revelations of the horrible condition prevailing in 
the packing houses, which had been portrayed by Upton Sinclair in a novel 
called '■ The Jungle." 



Eiiteriiig the Tweiitieth Century 607 

His prestige was acknowledged abroad as well as at home. 
At his suggestion a dispute over the right of European nations 
to collect their debts by force from the South American repub- 
lics was referred to the Hague Court.^ On his initiative Russia 
and Japan, who were engaged in a bloody war for the posses- 
sion of the ports of Manchuria and Korea, were tendered the 
friendly offices of the United States and brought to conclude 
peace at Portsmouth, New Hampshire (August, 1905). In the 
summer of 1906 President Roosevelt received the Nobel prize ^ 
for his services in the cause of international peace. 

Roosevelt had declared immediately after his election in 1904 852. Taft 
that he would not be a candidate for reelection. His recom- ^^^^^ ^° 
mendation of his Secretary of War, William H. Taft, as his 
successor was equivalent to a nomination — as Jackson's recom- 
mendation of Van Buren had been, seventy years before. Taft 
was nominated on the first ballot in the Republican convention 
at Chicago, June 18, 1908, and easily defeated his opponent, 
Bryan, by 321 electoral votes to 162, in a campaign devoid of 
any special interest. The old issues of silver and imperialism, 
on which Br^^an had run in 1896 and 1900, were dead. Both 
parties in 1908 pledged themselves to tariff revision, and 
Roosevelt had given his administration so democratic a charac- 
ter by his prosecution of the trusts that he had stolen most of 

1 On the motion of the emperor of Russia all the nations in diplomatic re- 
lations with the Russian court were invited to attend a conference at The Hague, 
Holland, in 1S99, for the purpose of discussing the reduction of armaments, the 
humanizing of warfare, and the settlement of international disputes by arbitration. 
As a result, although armaments were not decreased, more humane methods of 
warfare were adopted, and a permanent Court of Arbitration was established, to 
which many cases of international dispute have been referred for settlement. In 
1904 President Roosevelt suggested a second Hague conference, but it was 
postponed on account of the Russo-Japanese War until the summer of 1907, 
when it met in a splendid new hall built by Andrew Carnegie, an ardent apostle 
of universal peace. 

2 Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist who died in 1896, left a large fortune, the 
income of which was to be devoted to prizes to be awarded annually to men who 
had made conspicuous contributions to science, letters, and the cause of inter- 
national peace. President Roosevelt devoted his prize of '^s.opoo to establishing 
a commission to work for industrial peace in our country. 



6o8 Histoiy of the Repicblic since the Civil War 

Bryan's thunder. The Republicans maintained their invasion 
of the solid South by again carrying the state of Missouri, 
together with all the Northern and Western states except 
Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada. 

Immediately after the close of his term of office, Colonel 
Roosevelt went to East Africa on a long hunting trip to pro- 
cure specimens of rare game for the Smithsonian Institution 
at Washington. When he '^ emerged from the jungle,'- in the 




The Election of 1908 

spring of 19 10, he at once became the center of observation 
of the whole Western world. His trip from Egypt through Italy, 
Austria, France, Germany, Holland, and England was a con- 
tinuous ovation, such as no private citizen had ever received. 
Emperors, kings, princes, presidents, and ministers all received 
him with the highest marks of honor. Ele delivered addresses 
at the University of Cairo, at the Sorbonne, at the University 
of Berlin, and at Oxford University. He represented the United 
States at the funeral of King Edward VII in London. Whether 
he fills high public office again or not, Theodore Roosevelt 




WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 



E7itering the Twentieth Century 609 

will probably long remain, in the estimation of millions of his 
fellow countrymen, a very influential factor in our politics and 
the most popular citizen of the American republic. 

Present-Day • Problems 

More than a hundred years ago Fisher Ames of Massachusetts 854. our 
declared on the floor of Congress that our nation had grown " too stm^an^ex- 
big for union and too sordid for patriotism." The 5,000,000 p^""^^'^* 
Americans of Fisher Ames's time have increased twentyfold, 
and but yesterday one man in Wall Street, Mr. J. Pierpont 
Morgan, controlled railroads, steamship lines, industries, insur- 
ance companies, and banks capitalized at nearly $10,000,000,- 
000, — double the total wealth of the thirteen colonies which 
Fisher Ames, as a youth, rejoiced to see shake off the yoke of 
George III. Yet our union is more firmly cemented than ever 
before, and our devotion to the republic is unshaken. We are 
"attempting to maintain a democracy, or government by the 
people, on a scale never before witnessed in the world. The 
failure of our great experiment has been freely predicted both 
by pessimists at home and by incredulous visitors from abroad ; 
but these voices are only a stimulus to that '' eternal vigilance " 
which Daniel Webster declared to be the " price of liberty." 
Our republican government is always on trial, and its prob- 
lems at the present day are serious and menacing. 

The greatest danger to our republic to-day is the corruption 855. The 
of the government by the money power. The State is society ^democmcy 
organized for mutual protection and for various advantages in 
social intercourse, commerce, the cultivation of the arts and 
sciences, and interchange of products and ideas with the nations 
of the earth. The government, in a democratic state like ours, 
is simply a committee chosen by society to make and carry out 
the laws for the general benefit of society. Whenever the instru- 
ments of government — the legislatures, the courts, the execu- 
tive offices — are dominated by interests which make them serve 
only a small part of society, then the government ceases to be 



6io History of the Repitblic since the Civil War 



856. The 
menace of 
privilege 



" representative " and democratic. And unless the people con- 
stantly regain and preserve their control of the government, 
they must live in slavery. 

Now ever since the triumph of the '^ business interests " in the 
campaign of 1896 and the rapid organization of trusts follow- 
ing the Spanish War, 
material prosperity has 
become the most ab- 
sorbing concern of our 
country. The protection 
and encouragement of 
business has apparently 
outweighed even the safe- 
guarding of liberty. Not 
only do the great trusts 
control the economic in- 
terests of our country, — 
the output of products, 
the wages of laborers, the 
prices of the necessities 
of life,^ — but they invade the realm of politics and influence 
our lawmakers and our judges. Their enormous wealth makes 
it possible for them to secure from state legislatures the election 
to the United States Senate of men who are devoted to their 
interests, — railroad senators, sugar senators, oil senators, lum- 
ber senators, silver senators, — and the^e men can very often 




Cartoon representing the Immunity of 
the Trusts from Legal Punishment 



1 It is estimated that the huge United States Steel trust, with its capital of 
^1,400,000,000, controls over 80 per cent of the output of steel and iron in our 
country, that the Standard Oil trust controls 85 per cent of the petroleum prod- 
ucts, the Sugar trust 90 per cent of the sugar output, the coal-carrying railroads 
of Pennsylvania 95 per cent of the anthracite coal of the country. By throwing 
their products on the market or by withholding them, these giant corporations 
can create a glut or a famine in these necessities and so regulate their prices at 
will. By shutting down or opening up their mills, refineries, and mines in one 
district or another, they can absorb or reject great numbers of laborers, thereby 
disturbing the conditions of honest competition in the labor market. By the 
enormous size of their shipments they have been able to secure, even against 
drastic laws, favors from transportation companies, enabling them to undersell 



Entering the Twentieth Century 6 1 1 

dissuade Congress from passing laws hostile to the business 
interests which they represent. Moreover, since the senators 
virtually choose all the federal judges/ the interpretation of the 
law in the courts of the United States has been very widely 
suspected of leaning unduly in favor of the great corporations. 

The past ten years, however, have seen a wonderful awakening 857. The 
in the American people to the evils of trust-controlled govern- ^g^p^ifica*.^'^ 
ment. A wave of reform sentiment is sweeping over our country, tion of politics 
gaining force each year. This crusade for the " square deal " in 
business and the purification of politics has the support of influ- 
ential men of all parties. Since the daily press, often owned and 
muzzled by the trusts, has ceased to lead public opinion in this 
reform movement, a number of popular magazines (Collief^s 
Weekly, the Otctlook, the American Magazine, McClure's, Every- 
body'' s, the Cosmopolitan) have taken up the work of exposing 
the crooked methods of the trusts in business and politics, — 
the work of " muck-raking," as it has been called. In the 
Western states especially the reform movement has grown 
rapidly. In Wisconsin, for example, the people, after a ten 
years' fight led by Robert M. La Toilette (now United States 
senator), wrested their legislature from the control of the rail- 
roads, overthrew the old boss-ridden nominating convention, 
selected their own candidates for office by popular vote, and 
bound their legislature to elect to the United States Senate the 
men of the people's choice. Now two thirds of the states of 
the Union are nominating their lawmakers and officers by 
popular vote, and the election of United States senators has 

and crush out their rivals. Anthracite coal costs less than $2 a ton to mine at 
present. The railroad companies that own the mines sell the coal to the public 
at '$6 a ton and upwards. Their immense profits of ^200,000,000 a year go to 
pay dividends on the stock of the railroads. The president of the Ontario and 
Western Railroad has declared publicly that if competition were free, "stove 
coal would be a drug on the market at ^2 a ton." Imagine what that would 
mean for the comfort of millions of American homes ! 

1 According to the Constitution, the President appoints the federal judges ; 
but actually, by virtue of the custom of " senatorial courtesy," most of the 
federal officers " appointed by the President " are recommended to him by the 
senators of the states in which they are appointed. 




6l2 



Ejiteriiio- the Tzve7itietli Centic 



ry 



613 



been transferred from the legislatures to the people of the states 
(x\mendment XVII). Following the lead of Oregon, a number 
of states (Michigan, Missouri, South Dakota, Utah, Oklahoma, 
Montana, Maine, Arkansas, Colorado, Arizona, California, Wash- 
ington, Nebraska, Idaho, Nevada, Ohio) had up to 19 13 adopted 
the "initiative" and the ''referendum."^ In a word, the people 
are beginning to control their representatives, to make govern- 



■ 


;; 


^ 


., 


M 


^ 


'O 


<£> 


- 


00 


C5 


3 


s 




Date 


1 
1 


1 


a 


ft 


i 




1 

a 


Si 
1 


X 

1-3 




i 


.2 


Vote 


Mar, 15, 1909 


I 


m 






"W: 













OKI Uulcs 


Mar. 15, 1909 


II 


' T1§ 






1 




Fitzgerald Kesolution 


Jul. 31, 1909 


III 


wi'^'"'' " \'''WM0- 




Payne TaritrBill 


Jan. 7, 1910 


I\ 




Ballingrer Committee 


Mar. 19, 1910 


\ 




!■■;■■' 




Norris Kesolutiou 


Jun.7,1910 


\ 1 


— 






I.enroot Railroad Motion 


Jun. 7, 1910 


\11 




« 


.... 


:::,■ 




:.- 


.;„: 


M 




TuNtal Gag Itule 



t£j "Progressive" |iiM'"Standpat" L2i Democrat I | Ko-Vote 

How Wisconsin keeps a Watch on its Congressmen 
Published record of votes of each representative on important bills 



ment a service to the community at large. The people are de- 
termined to drive business out of politics. Twenty years ago 
Senator Ingalls of Kansas declared cynically that the purification 
of politics was " an iridescent dream." To-day there is a great 
company of Americans resolved that the dream shall come true. 



1 By the " initiative " is meant the right of the people to initiate legislation. 
On the petition of a certain small percentage of the voters of the state, a subject 
is presented to the legislature and the legislature is obliged to take action upon 
it. The " referendum " provides that laws passed by the legislature must, 
upon petition of a percentage of the voters of the state, be " referred " to the peo- 
ple for indorsement or rejection. Thus, by these two popular provisions, there is 
no subject on which the legislature can permanently refuse to take action if the 
people desire it, and no law that it can permanently register on the records of the 



6 1 4 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



858. The in- 
surgents and 
the " stand- 
patters " 



859. The 
Taft admin- 
istration 
rebuked 



A group of men in Congress, consisting of about a dozen 
senators and a score of representatives, called the "insurgents," 
undertook to reform the Republican party. They opposed the 
administration of President Taft for its failure to redeem the pre- 
election pledge to lower the tariff,^ for refusing to give the 
government the power to determine the true value of the rail- 
roads and to control their issues of stocks and bonds (p. 543, 
note i), and for general indifference to reforms for which 
they asserted the country was ready and anxious. In March, 
19 10, they succeeded, in combination with the Democrats, in 
amending the n.iles of the House, so as to force the Speaker, 
" Uncle Joe " Cannon, off the important Committee on Rules.^ 
They accused the President of weakly surrendering to the 
" standpatters," ^ in order to preserve harmony in the Republi- 
can ranks ; while the standpatters w^ere inclined to regard the 
insurgents as a group of hot-headed agitators, and traitors to 
the Republican part)% who would soon be glad to return to 
their former allegiance. 

The complaint of the insurgents that the Taft administration 
was not satisfying the people of the country, and that the Payne- 
Aldrich tariff was not a fair answer to the demand for " down- 
ward revision," was justified by the Congressional election of 
19 10, which returned 227 Democrats and 163 Republicans to 
the House — the first Democratic victory since 1892. Thus, 
although President Taft was busied with useful and constructive 



state if the people oppose it. The " recall," or the dismissal of a public official 
by the people, is a still more radical measure of popular control. It is practiced 
(1913) in seven states and in a number of city governments. 

1 President Taft admitted when he signed the Payne-Aldrich Bill, on August 5, 
1909, that it was " not a perfect tariff bill, nor a complete compliance with the' 
promises made, strictly interpreted." 

2 See above, p. 546, note i. 

3 The word " standpatter " is borrowed from the slang of the game of poker, 
where to "stand pat" means to be satisfied with the cards one holds. The 
Republican standpatters were willing to rely for their support by the voters on 
what the party had accomplished (the successful war against Spajjp, the organi- 
zation of our foreign conquests, the return of business prosperity), instead of 
making promises for the future. 



i 



E^itering the Twentieth Century 615 

measures during the second half of his term of office,^ he was 
able to accomplish but little in the face of the Democratic 
majority in the House. They insisted on reopening the tariff 
question by passing bills for the reduction of the duties on 
woolens, cotton goods, and food stuffs, which Taft vetoed on 
the ground that any further changes in the tariff should be made 
only after careful study and recommendation by the tariff board 
of experts created in 1909. 

As the presidential campaign of 19 12 approached, the split 86O. The 

Pro fif rcssivB 

in the Republican ranks became more ominous, especially as party 
ex-President Roosevelt, who had returned to the United States 
in June, 19 10, and had soon afterwards thrown himself into 
politics, began to support the principles of the insurgents,^ 
without, however, joining the National Republican Progressive 
League, which was formed under the auspices of Senator La 
Follette of Wisconsin, in January, 191 1. La Follette was for a 
time a prominent candidate for the Republican nomination for 
president; but in February, 19 12, seven Progressive Governors 
came out with a strong public appeal to ex-President Roosevelt 
to lead the ticket. Although he had protested, as late as August, 
191 1, against any movement to make him the nominee, Roose- 
velt yielded. The contest for the nomination at the Chicago 
convention in June was a dramatic struggle. Unable to get his 
delegates from several states seated, Roosevelt finally bolted the 
convention, hurling the defiant manifesto against it that " any 

1 Chief among these measures were a reciprocity treaty with Canada (p. 553, 
note), which the Canadians rejected by turning out their government in Septem- 
ber, 191 1 ; an arbitration treaty with England (p. 589, note i), which our Senate 
amended out of existence ; laws requiring the publication and limitation of cam- 
paign expenditures ; the establishment of a parcel-post system ; the admission 
of New Mexico and Arizona as states of the Union ; and the prosecution of several 
suits against the trusts (Oil, Harvester, Steel). 

2 For example, in a speech on " The New Nationalism " at Osawatamie, 
Kansas, on August 31, 1910, Roosevelt advocated direct primaries, the recall, an 
income tax, tariff revision, labor legislation, trust regulation. As contributing 
editor of the Outlook he criticized the " standpattism " of the Taft administration. 
And before the convention which was framing a new constitution for Ohio, in 
February, 1912, he spoke the language of the Progressives outright, declaring 
for the initiative, the referendum, and (in a modified sense) the recall. 



6i6 History of the Republic since the Civil War 



861. The 
election of 
igi2 



862. "The 
shame of the 
cities " 



man nominated by the convention as now constituted would be 
merely the beneficiary of a successful fraud." The Progressives 
rallied to his support. The new party was rapidly organized, 
and its convention met at Chicago, August 5, 191 2. Amid 
great enthusiasm it nominated Theodore Roosevelt of New 
York and Governor Hiram Johnson of California for its 
presidential ticket. 

Meanwhile, the Republican convention had renominated Taft 
and Sherman on the first ballot; and the Democrats, meeting 
at Baltimore, June 25, after an exciting week's contest between 
Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri and Governor Woodrow 
Wilson of New Jersey, had nominated the latter on the forty- 
sixth ballot. The election in November resulted in a decisive 
victory for Wilson, though his popular vote was 2,000,000 less 
than the combined vote for his opponents.^ The Democrats 
also got control of both Houses of Congress (Senate, 5 1 to 45 ; 
House, 291 to 144), an advantage held by them in only one ses- 
sion (i 893-1 895) since the days of Buchanan's administration.^ 

Nowhere is the movement for the purification of politics 
more marked than in the government of our cities. A genera- 
tion ago our most sympathetic foreign critic, the distinguished 



1 The figures of the election are as follows : 


Candidate 


Party 


Popular vote 


Electoral 


States carried 


Wilson 
Roosevelt 
Taft 
Debs 


Dem. 
Prog. 
Rep. 
Soc. 


6,290,818 
4,123,206 

3.484,'529 
898,296 


435 

88 

8 


All except 

Cal., Mich., Minn., Pa., S. Dak., Wash., 

Utah, Vermont 



2 President Wilson called his Congress in extra session a few weeks after his 
inauguration. In an unprecedented period of activity (April, 1913-July, 1914), 
Congress passed the Underwood Tariff (including an Income Tax provision), a 
Currency Bill (establishing " federal reserve banks " to help to keep our finances 
in stable equilibrium), and a Bill repealing the tolls exemption (1912) for Ameri- 
can coastwise vessels passing through the Panama Canal. The greatest popular 
interest has centered in the President's and Secretary of State Bryan's handling 
of the delicate and distressing situation in revolution-torn Mexico, which brought 
us to actual hostilities with the Huerta government, and cost the lives of seven- 
teen marines in our forcible occupation of Vera Cruz (April, 1914). 



Entering the Twentieth Centn^y 617 

English statesman and author James Bryce, declared in his 
famous work '' The American Commonwealth " that municipal 
government was the one conspicuous failure of democracy in 
America. Our own public men were obliged sadly to echo his 
words. For our cities were in the hands of rings and bosses, 
who robbed their treasuries, squandered their taxes, sold their 
offices, and woefully neglected their health, cleanliness, education, 
and reputation. Every now and then a city would rise in a spasm 
of indignation and '' turn the rascals out " for a year or two. 
]>ut the forces of reform were unorganized and intermittent, 
while the forces of corruption were thoroughly organized and 
unrelaxing. And the latter won. " The shame of the cities " ^ 
continued to be the reproach of the country. 

But a decided change came at the beginning of the new 863. Com- 
centyry. A flood devastated Galveston, Texas, in September, ernment^^^' 
1900, and the people intrusted the management of their city 
during its rebuilding to a committee of experts. The economies 
in the city treasury and the efficacy of the administration were 
so astonishing that other cities began to study Galveston as a 
pattern for municipal organization. Des Moines, Iowa, took 
the lead, and carefully developed a plan of " commission gov- 
ernment" which scores of cities in our country have followed. 
The people govern, according to the Des Moines plan, and not 
the corrupt ring. The boss is dethroned. No franchise can 
be granted by the city council without the people's consent. 
Every ordinance requiring the expenditure of the city's money 
must be publicly posted for a week before action is taken on 
it, and a petition signed by a certain percentage of the voters 
can compel its reference to a public vote. The commissioners, 
aldermen, and councilmen are selected directly by the people, 
without the intervention of any caucus or party machine or con- 
vention. Each of the commissioners, usually five in number, is 

1 The title of a book by Lincoln Steffens (1904) revealing the unspeakable 
corruption of the government of several of our largest cities (Minneapolis, 
St. Louis, Philadelphia, San Francisco). 



6 1 8 History of the Republic since the Civil War 

responsible for some department of the city government (public 
affairs, finance, public safety, streets and improvements, parks 
and public works). No city officer can be interested in any con- 
tract with the city or any corporation serving the city (as water- 
works, street-car lines, telephones, lighting plants). All officers 
are subject to removal at any time by the vote of the people. 
By midsummer, 19 14, nearly 250 American cities, mostly west 
of the Mississippi River, had adopted the commission plan of 
city government ; and the unanimous testimony is that immense 
improvements have resulted from it. Debts are wiped out, 
streets are cleaned, new schools and parks are opened, taxes 
are reduced, and the people's money, instead of going into the 
pockets of the "boodler" and the ''grafter," is being spent for 
the purposes for which the people voted to have it spent.^ 
864. The Besides the reformers who look to a vigilant enforcement of 

Socialism the law to '' curb the trusts " and purify our politics, there is a 
small but increasing body of men who believe that our entire 
industrial and political system must be changed if we are not 
to become a nation of slaves, controlled by a few multimillionaires. 
This party bears the name of " Socialist," because it believes 
that our national wealth should be "socialized"; that is, owned 
by society at large and operated solely for the benefit of the 
people. To expect to check the power of the trusts over our 
politics, our courts of justice, and the lives of our twenty millions 
of wage earners, while leaving these same trusts in possession 

1 The immense and constantly growing importance of good government for 
our cities may be realized from a few statistics. While the population of our 
country at large increased 1 8-fold during the last century, the population of our 
cities increased ii8-fold. In Washington's day only one thirtieth of our popu- 
lation lived in cities ; now over one third of our 100,000,000 are inhabitants of 
cities, and the six largest cities of our country contain over 10,000,000 people. 
The total indebtedness of our cities is $1,400,000,000 — a sum greater than the 
debt of the United States. New York City alone (rated by the census of 1910 at 
4,766,000) has a population as large, and wealth twenty times as great, as all the 
thirteen colonies combined had in 1775. Its property valuation (|;6,8oo,ooo,ooo) is 
greater than that of all the states west of the Missouri River. Its subway, surface, 
and elevated lines carry more passengers annually than all the steam railroads 
in America. 



Entering the Tiventieth Centtiry 619 

of the means and instruments of the country's wealth (its land, 

its transportation systems, its coal, oil, and lumber fields, its 

factories and machinery), is as foolish, say the Socialists, as to 

expect to stop a river fed from a thousand springs by building 

a dam across the middle of its course. We must socialize these 

means of the production and distribution of our wealth. They 

must be owned or managed by the government for the benefit 

of the whole people rather than by a few men for the reaping 

of enormous profits. 

Socialism cannot be explained in a paragraph. It is as difB- 865. sociai- 
1 , n T • r iM ,. . . ., 1 Trr ism generally 

cult to denne as religion, for, like religion, it means widely dirter- misunder- 

ent things to different people, and is very largely an aspiration, program ^^^ 
It has, however, been commonly and unjustly confused in the ^°<i ^^"^^ 
popular mind with anarchism, which seeks to abolish govern- 
ment, and communism, which seeks to abolish private property. 
It has also been unjustly associated in the popular mind with 
violence, revolution, and a hateful war of the poor against the 
rich — largely, perhaps, because many of the foreigners who 
have been prominent in the Socialist party have come from 
lands where the torch, the bomb, and the dagger seem the only 
weapons against despotism. But in this country the ballot, freely 
put into the hands of practically every man, is the weapon for 
peaceful revolution ; and on the ballot the Socialist party de- 
pends. Its vote when it first entered the presidential contest, in 
1892, was 21,164. In 1908 it cast 423,969 votes. The common 
objections to Socialism — that it would discourage all incentive 
to progress, destroy all initiative in business, reduce all men to a 
common humdrum level of inferiority, break up the home, and, 
in the words of President Butler of Columbia University, "wreck 
the world's efficiency for the purpose of redistributing the world's 
discontent " — have been fully discussed in the writings of the 
modem advocates of Socialism.-^ 

1 See H. G. Wells, New Worlds for Old (1907) ; John Spargo, Socialism 
(1906) ; W. J. Ghent, Mass and Class (1904) ; Morris Hillquit, Socialism in 
Theory and Practice (1909) ; and especially Edmond Kelly, Twentieth Century 
Socialism (1910). 



620 History of tJic Republic since tJie Civil War 



866. Evils 
against which 
Socialism 
protests 



The late Mark Hanna, whose ideas on business and politics we 
have already noticed (p. 569), declared that the old party lines 
between Democrats and Republicans were being obliterated, 
and that the struggle in this country was soon to come between 
Socialism and capitalism ; and, in fact, the present insurgent 
movement actually has in its program many of the demands 
of the Socialist party. Individualism was the watchword of 
the nineteenth century ; cooperation will be the motto of the 
twentieth. It is inconceivable that the great body of American 
citizens, with their high average of intelligence, their native 
alertness, and splendid standards of industry, will long allow 
one tenth of their number to stagnate in abject poverty,^ their 
workers to produce in abundance the food and clothing of 
which they get a miserably meager share, and their little chil- 
dren (the hope of the next generation) to be maimed and 
stunted in labor night and day in factories, mills, and mines, in 
order that a few more hundred million dollars may be distributed 
in dividends to the few fortunate people who own such a large 
part of the wealth of our land. 

Besides these serious political and industrial questions that 
face our country at the beginning of the new century, there are 
other problems growing out of our relations to inferior races. 
We have assumed the government of about 8,000,000 oriental 
and Latin-American people in the Philippines and Porto Rico, 
with the responsibility for the orderly conduct of 2,000,000 more 
in Cuba. What we have done for these people has already been 
briefly described, but how great demands they are going to make 
on our purse and our patience we do not yet know. It is clear 
that their education in democracy, their defense and develop- 
ment, must be very important concerns for us, influencing our 
politics considerably. 



1 Mr. Robert Hunter, in his work entitled " Poverty " (1904), shows that there 
are 10,000,000 people in the United States actually without the food, shelter, and 
clothing necessary to make them efficient workers and respectable members of 
our great social republic. 



E7ttermg the Tiventieth Century 621 

Within our borders we have a race problem more serious 868. The 
than that of any other nation in the world. The negroes form lem 
about one half the population of our Southern states. Since 
their emancipation fifty years ago they have made considerable 
progress ; ^ but still they are, as a race, far, perhaps centuries, 
behind the whites in civilization. How these two races are to live 
together in our Southland is a great problem. A few Southern 
leaders unfortunately still advocate the stern repression and even 
the terrorization of the negro. Not only would they keep the 
colored race entirely out of politics,''^ but they would force it to 
remain uneducated and inefficient. '' Money spent for public 
schools for the negro," said Governor Vardaman of Mississippi 
in 1908, "is robbery of the white man and a waste upon the 
negro." The same spirit encourages, or at least regards with 
complacent indifference, the denial of civic justice to the negro, 
and permits the South to be disgraced by lynchings and race 
riots. On the other side are a group of noble Southern gende- 
men who realize that neither cruelty nor repression is going to 
make a good citizen of the negro ; that the health and peace 
and progress of the South depend upon the education to their 
greatest efficiency of both the races within its borders ; and 
that, while the races must always be kept distinct socially, the 
dominance of the white man can and must be the dominance 
of the elder and stronger brother who educates, protects, and 
encourages the weaker. 

The industrial and commercial progress of the South in the 
last generation is one of the most remarkable facts in our 

1 Illiteracy among the negroes decreased from yo per cent in 1880 to 44 per 
cent in 1900. The wealth of the negroes to-day is estimated at over ^300,000,000. 
They owned or rented 746,717 farms in 1905, containing altogether some 38,000,- 
000 acres, or double the area of Scotland. They have over 30 banks, besides 
building-loan companies, insurance companies, and mutual-aid societies. There 
are nearly 2000 negro physicians and surgeons in the United States, and 1,600,000 
negroes (about one half those of school age) are enrolled in the public schools. 

2 We have already discussed the Reconstruction program of the North, which 
put the ballot into the hands of the utterly unfit negro just emancipated from 
bondage (p. 485), and have noticed the ways in which the South has nullified the 
fourteenth and fifteenth amendments Cp. 550, note i). 



62 2 His ton' of tilt Republic since the Civil War 



histon*. Since iSSo its railroad mileage has increased from 
20.000 to 87,000 miles, the capital in its cotton mills from 
$21,000,000 to $300,000,000, the value of its manufactures 
from $457,000,000 to $2,775,000,000, of its food products 
from $660,000,000 to $2,750,000,000, and of its exports from 
$264,000,000 to $62;. 000. 000. And still its resen-es of timber. 







A Group of Immigrants 

coal, and iron ore are enormous. The South needs the labor of 
the negro. The prolongation of race hatred can bring her only 
detriment and sorrow. 
869. immi- Finally, a third phase of the race problem which confronts 

gration a it--'jo 1 • r ^ ... 

race problem the L nited btates at the openmg of the new centur}- is immi- 
gration. It is only ^^^thin recent years that immigration has 
been a race problem. Before iSSo over four fifths of all the 
immigrants to the United States were from Canada and the 
nortliem coimtries of Europe, which were allied to us in blood, 
language, customs, religion, and political ideas. They were a 
most welcome addition to our population, especially in the 
development of the great farm lands of the ^^>st. They assimi- 
lated rapidly ^\-ith our people, cherished our free institutions, 
and in the second sreneration became die most American of 



Entermg the Tiveiitieth Century 



623 



Americans. But since 1880 a steady change has been going 
on in the character of our immigration. The Germans, Irish, 
Swedes, and English are being replaced by the Hungarians, 
Poles, Russians, Italians, and other peoples of southern and 
eastern Europe.^ Each year brings a million of them — more 
than the total number of colonists that came to this country 
between the settlement at Jamestown and the American Revo- 
lution. Moreover, they no longer come impelled by the desire to 
build up new homes in the new land, but are brought over by 
the agents of steamship companies and large corporations and 
set to work in great gangs under " padrones," or bosses. Their 
low standards of living tend to reduce wages, and their con- 
gestion in the slums of the great cities makes breeding places 
for disease and offers the unscrupulous politician cheap votes 
with which to debauch the city government.^ 

Wq are alive to-day to the dangers of unrestricted immigra- 870. The 
tion. Our laws are framed both to protect American labor immigration 
against the cheap contract gang labor of the imported immi- 
grants, and to insure sound citizenship in our republic. The 
convict, the pauper, the anarchist, the lunatic, the diseased, and 
the destitute are no longer allowed to enter our ports. A head 
tax of S4 on each immigrant (included by the steamship com- 
pany in his passage money) goes to make up a fund to pay the 
expenses of deporting the unfit; while a fine of $100 against 

1 The following table, adapted from Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems, 
p. y^, shows the change in the character of our immigration. 





Countries 


1 870-1880 


1880-1890 


1890-1900 


1907 


Germany, Scandinavia, Great Britain; 


82.8% 


75-6% 


41.8% 


16.7% 


Italy, Austria, Russia, Poland . , ' 


6.4% 


17.6% 


50.1% 


75.8% 


All other countries 


ic.S'''; 


6.S> 


s.i'; 


7.5V 



2 In 1900 the foreign bom constituted 26.1 per cent of the total of our city 
population, and only 94 per cent of our country and town population. In New 
York 76.9 per cent of the inhabitants were of foreign parentage : in Chicago, 
774 per cent; in Boston, 72.2 per cent. In the Hancock School in Boston there 
were over 1000 Hebrew and Italian children and only 80 Americans. 



624 History of tJie Republic since the Civil War 



871. Amer- 
ica not " the 
land of the 
Almighty 
Dollar alone '" 



872. Pater- 
nalism in 
America 



the Steamship line that brings in a diseased immigrant makes 
the health inspectors on the ocean liners more painstaking in the 
discharge of their duty. The whole question of immigration is 
summed up in this : Can we assimilate and mold into citizen- 
ship the millions who are coming to our shores, or will they 
remain an ever-increasing body of aliens, an undigested and 
indigestible element in our body politic, and a constant menace 
to our free institutions ? 

The constant criticism directed against us by foreign nations 
is that America is the land of dollars, and that we care little for 
the encouragement of letters, art, science, and scholarship. This 
criticism is in a measure true, and in a measure false and due 
to a misconception. It is true that the development of our 
almost fabulous resources of mineral and agricultural wealth, 
as we have advanced to the shores of the Pacific, has occupied 
the lion's share of our energies ; and that the great " captains 
of industr)' " have received more notice than great scholars or 
artists. But it is equally true that our foreign critics have failed 
to realize how much encouragement education has received in 
this countr)', because our government does not, like most of the 
European governments, concern itself directly with the schooling 
of the nation. That is left to state and local authorities. So that 
while our national government spends less, our people actually 
spend more per capita for education than any other nation in 
the world. The public school is a revered institution in America, 
on which is spent from 25 to 50 per cent of the revenues of 
some of our New England and Middle Western communities.^ 

From the foundation of our nation there have been diver- 
gent opinions as to the scope of government in the affairs of 
the people, — whether it should simply confine itself to the 



1 The public-school bill of the American people, paid entirely out of local taxa- 
tion, amounts to some 5500,000,000 a year. We have 500,000 teachers instructing 
iS,ooo,ooo children. Private contributions to colleges and higher institutions of 
research are liberal in America. Between 1890 and 1900, Sioo,ooo,ooo were donated 
by John D. Rockefeller, Senator Leland Stanford, Andrew Carnegie, A. J. Drexel, 
Seth Low, and others to the cause of higher education. 



Entering the Twentieth Century 625 

protection of life, liberty, and property, or should actively en- 
gage in the promotion of industry, the encouragement of 
morals, and the education of the people. Fourteen European 
governments protect women and children from night work 
and excessive hours of day work. Germany, through its insti- 
tution of state insurance, cares for 100,000 children a year by 
pensioning widowed mothers. 
This kind of legislation is 
called " paternalism," for it 
puts the state in a paternal, 
or fatherly, relation to the 
citizen. Our own government 
has always had some elements 
of paternalism. The protec- 
tive tariff, for example, has ■ . v-^^^ ^a « 
been maintained to keep the "^^ %. % 



M '■" :~ 





wages of American workers /'/*" -^^4^'* f'' 



high. The national Pure Food W 



'&' 



and Drugs Law of 1906 

was passed to safeguard the ^'^^^^' ^""^ ^' ^^'^^'^ ^" '^^ P^"^" 

sylvania Mines 
health of our people. Presi- 
dent Taft has recently suggested the creation of '' a national 
bureau of health." Such an institution would doubtless secure 
national laws prohibiting the stupid inhumanity of child labor,^ 
safeguarding the lives of workers in our mines and on our 



1 According to the census of 1900 there were over 700,000 children under 
sixteen years working in the mines, mills, factories, and sweatshops of the United 
States. John Spargo, in his " Bitter Cry of the Children," tells of cigar factories 
in New Jersey and Pennsylvania nicknamed " kindergartens " because of the great 
number of little children employed in them. He found children of six and seven 
working at 2 a.m. canning vegetables in the factories of New York State. Most 
of the states have child-labor laws, but they are not enforced. In the South, where 
conditions are the worst, only one state (North Carolina) has a labor commission, 
and frequently there is no inspection of the factories whatever, to see whether 
the laws are being violated or not. An investigator in Augusta, Georgia, found 
556 children under twelve years of age working in eight mills in June, 1900. One 
physician testified to amputating the fingers of over 100 children, whose little 
hands had been caught in the rapid machinery of the cotton mills. 



626 History of the Repiiblic since the Civil War 

railroads/ and prescribing conditions under which many danger- 
ous or exhausting industries should be conducted. 

873. The Public opinion constantly acts on the government, drawing 
licTpi'nion^' i^^^o the field of legislation new subjects. The slave power 

fought for years against the introduction into Congress of any 
measure restricting its extension. The railroads and corpora- 
tions opposed, as ^' unheard of," the meddling of the govern- 
ment with their " business." So when the sentiment in favor 
of checking the waste of our nation's manhood by strong drink, 
and of our nation's substance by the construction of battleships 
costing $12,000,000 or more shall have grown to its full strength, 
we may see the saloon follow the slave block into oblivion and 
the millions now spent on engines of destruction devoted to the 
eradication of disease and the enlightenment of the mind. 

874. The The problems of a democracy are ever changing to meet the 
ourTeniocracy developing needs and the unfolding ideals of the people. Our 

problem in America at the opening of the twentieth century is 
no longer that of George Washington's day, — to establish the 
forms and powers of a republican government ; nor that of 
Andrew Jackson's day, — to admit to a full share in that govern- 
ment the sturdy manhood of the nation ; nor that of Abraham 
Lincoln's day, — to save the life of the Union while cutting from 
it the cancer of slavery ; nor that of William McKinley's day, 
— to introduce the United States among the nations which are 
to control the destinies of the undeveloped races of the world. 
To-day we are rich, united, powerful. But the very material 
prosperity which is our boast menaces the life of our democracy. 
The power of money threatens to choke the power of law. The 
spirit of gain is sacrificing to its insatiable greed the spirit of 
brotherhood and the very life of the toilers of the land — even 
the joyous years of tender childhood. Unless we are to sink 
into ignoble slavery or fall a prey to horrid revolution, the 

1 In 1907 over 6800 workers were killed in mines, and each year about 80,000 
employees are killed or injured on our railroads, chiefly through lack of safety 
appliances. 



Entering tJie TwcntietJi Century 627 

manhood of the nation must rise in its moral strength to restore 
our democratic institutions to the real control of the people, to 
assert the superiority of men over machines, and the value of a 
brotherhood of social cooperation and mutual goodwill above 
the highest statistics of commercial gain. Our noble mission is 
still to realize the promise of the immortal words of Abraham 
Lincoln, that " government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people shall not perish from the earth." 

REFERENCES 

The Spanish War and the Philippines : J. H. Latane, America as a 
Wo7id Power (American Nation Series), chaps, i-x; A. C. Coolidge, 
The United States as a World Pozue?', chaps, v-viii; J. W. FOSTER, AmeH- 
can Diplomacy i7i the Orient., chap, xiii ; J. G. Schurman, Philippine 
Affairs ; H. P. Willis, Onr Philippine Probleyn ; E. E. Sparks, The 
Expansioti of the American People, chap, xxxvi ; J. D. Long, The New 
American Navy, chaps, v-xii ; H. T. Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic, 
chaps, xii-xiv ; A. B. Hart, Afnerican History told by Contemporaries, 
Vol. IV, Nos. 180-196; The Obvious Orient, chaps, xxiv-xxvi ; E. B. 
Andrews, The United States in our Own Time, chaps, xxvii, xxviii; 
James Bryce, The A?ne?-ican Commomvealth (enlarged edition of 1911), 
Vol. II, chap, xcvii; histories of the Spanish War by H. C. Lodge, 
R. A. Alger, and Henry Watterson. • 

The Roosevelt Policies : Latane, chaps, xii-xvi ; Peck, chap, xv ; 
Coolidge, chaps, xv-xix; J. W. Foster,^ Centuiy of American Diplo- 
macy, chap, xii ; E. L. Bogart, Economic Histoiy of the United States, 
chap. XXX ; H. C. Lodge (ed.). Addresses and Presidential Messages of 
Theodore Roosevelt, igo2-igo4 ; Francis Curtis, The Republican Party, 
chaps, xvi-xviii; F. W. Holls, The Peace Conference at The Hague, chaps, 
i, ii, viii ; W. F. Johnson, Four Centuries of the Panatna Canal, chaps, 
viii-xii; John Mitchell, Organized Labor, chaps, xvii, xviii; biographies 
of Roosevelt by F. E. Leupp, J. A. Riis, and W. M. Clemens. 

Present-Day Problems : Latane, chaps, xvii, xviii ; Peck, chap, xvi ; 
Bryce, Vol. II, chaps, xcii-xciii, c-ciii, cxxii ; Coolidge, chaps, ii, 
iii, xvii-xix ; R. Mayo-Smith, Emig?-ation and Im}nigratio7t, chaps, 
i, iii, vii, viii, xii ; P. Leroy-Beaulieu, The United States in the Twen- 
tieth Century, Part I; J. L. Laughlin, Industrial Amer-ica, chaps, ii-v, 
vii ; A. B. Hart, National Ideas Historically Traced (Am. Nation), 
chaps, iii-ix, xix ; Adams and Sumner, Labor Problems, Books II-V; 



628 History of the Repiiblic since the Civil War 

J. G. Brooks, The Social Unrest, chaps, vii-xii ; John Spargo, Social- 
ism; Morris Hillquit, Socialism in Theory and Practice ; GiFFORD 
PiNCHOT, The Fight for Conservation. 



TOPICS FOR SPECIAL REPORTS 

1. Child Labor: Adams and Sumner, pp. 19-64, 551-554; John 
Spargo, The Bitter Cry of the Children, pp. 125-217; Felix Abler, 
Child Labor in the United States {Ame7'ican Academy of Political and 
Social Science, Vol. XXV, pp. 415-562) ; also series of articles in Ameri- 
can Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. XXVII ; E. S. Murphy, 
Problems of the Present South, pp. 127-149, and Appendix B. 

2. The Hague Peace Conference of 1899: Holls, pp. 1-35, 365-372; 
Latane, pp. 242-254; A. D. White, Antobiog7-aphy, Vol. II, pp. 250- 
354; J. W. Foster, Arbitration and the Hague Court. 

3. Should Immigration be restricted? Adams and Sumner, pp. 80- 
III ; P. F. Hall, Imtnigration, pp. 309-323; Mayo-Smith, pp. 266- 
302; Hart, pp. 42-46; Bryce, Vol. II, pp. 469-490; Francis Walker, 
Discussions in Economics and Statistics, Vol. II, pp. 417-451. 

4. Anti-Imperialism: Coolidge, pp. 148-171 ; Peck, pp. 610-612; 
Andrews, pp. 853-858; Willis, pp. 23-28; G. F. Hoar, Autobiog- 
raphy of Seventy Years, Vol. II, pp. 304-329; Edward Atkinson, The 
Cost of War and Warfare from i8g8 to igo^; Moorfield Storey, What 
shall we do with our Dependencies ? 



APPENDIX I 

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

In Congress, July 4, 1776 

A DECLARATION BY THE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN CONGRESS 

ASSEMBLED 

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for 
one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them 
with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the 
separate anc^ equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's 
God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind re- 
quires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the 
separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident : That all men are created 
equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalien- 
able rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned ; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive 
of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, 
and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such 
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall 
seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, 
indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be 
changed for light and transient causes ; and accordingly all experi- 
ence hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while 
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms 
to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and 
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to 
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, 

C29 



630 Appetidix I 

to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their 
future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colo- 
nies ; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter 
their former systems of government. The history of the present 
King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpa- 
tions, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute 
tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to 
a candid world. 

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and neces- 
sary for the public good. 

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and 
pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his 
assent should be obtained ; and, when so suspended, he has utterly 
neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large 
districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of 
representation in the legislature, — a right inestimable to them, and 
formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncom- 
fortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for 
the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measure. 

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, 
with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause 
others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of 
annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise ; 
the state remaining, in the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of 
invasions from without and convulsions within. 

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states ; for 
that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners, 
refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and rais- 
ing the conditions of new appropriations of lands. 

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his 
assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. 

He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of 
their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms 
of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. 



Declaj'ation of hidepe^idence 631 

He has kept among us in times of peace, standing armies, without 
the consent of our legislatures. 

He has affected to render the military independent of, and supe- 
rior to, the civil power. 

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign 
to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his 
assent to their acts of pretended legislation : 

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us ; 

For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any 
murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states ; 

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world ; 

For imposing taxes on us without our consent ; 

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury ; 

For transporting us beyond seas, to be tried for pretended 
offenses ; 

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring 
province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarg- 
ing its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit in- 
strument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies ; 

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, 
and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments ; 

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves 
invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his 
protection and waging war against us. 

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, 
and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries 
to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already be- 
gun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the 
most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high 
seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners 
of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrection among us, and has en- 
deavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless 
Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished 
destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. 



632 Appendix I 

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress 
in the most humble terms ; our repeated petitions have been answered 
only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked 
by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a 
free people. 

Nor have we been wanting in our attentions to our British breth- 
ren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts by their 
legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have 
reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement 
here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; 
and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to 
disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our con- 
nections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice 
of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the 
necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold 
the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. 

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of Amer- 
ica, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge 
of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and 
by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly pub- 
lish and declare. That these united colonies are, and of right ought 
to be, free and independent states ; that they are absolved from all 
allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection be- 
tween them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally 
dissolved; and that, as free and independent states, they have full 
power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish com- 
merce, and do all other acts and things which independent states may 
of right do. And, for the support of this declaration, with a firm re- 
liance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to 
each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. 



Decla7%ition of Ijidepeiideiice 



jj 



The foregoing Declaration was, by order of Congress, engrossed 
and signed by the following members : 



NEW HAMPSHIRE 

JOSIAH BaRTLETT 

William Whipple 
Matthew Thornton 

MASSACHUSETTS BAY 

Samuel Adams 
John Adams 
Robert Treat Paine 
Elbridge Gerry 

RHODE ISLAND 
Stephen Hopkins 
William Ellery 

CONNECTICUT 
Roger Sherman 
Samuel Huntington 
William Williams 
Oliver Wolcott 

NEW YORK 
William Floyd 
Philip Livingston 
Francis Lewis 
Lewis Morris 



John Hancock 

NEW JERSEY 
Richard Stockton 
John Witherspoon 
Francis Hopkinson 
John Hart 
Abraham Clark 

PENNSYLVANIA 
Robert Morris 
Benjamin Rush 
Benjamin Franklin 
John Morton 
George Clymer 
James Smith 
George Taylor 
James Wilson 
George Ross 

DELAWARE 
CiESAR Rodney 
George Read 

Thomas M'Kean 

MARYLAND 
Samuel Chase 
William Paca 



Thomas Stone 
Charles Carroll, of 
Carrollton 

VIRGINIA 
George Wythe 
Richard Henry Lee 
Thomas Jefferson 
Benjamin Harrison 
Thomas Nelson, Jr. 
Francis Lightfoot Lee 
Carter Braxton 

NORTH CAROLINA 
William Hooper 
Joseph Hewes 
John Penn 

SOUTH CAROLINA 
Edward Rutledge 
Thomas Heyward, Jr. 
Thomas Lynch, Jr. 
Arthur Middleton 

GEORGIA 
Button Gwinnett 
Lyman Hall 
George Walton 



Resolved^ That copies of the Declaration be sent to the several 
assemblies, conventions, and committees, or councils of safety, and to 
the several commanding officers of the continental troops ; that it be 
proclaimed in each of the United States, at the head of the army. 



APPENDIX II 

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
OF AMERICA 

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more per- 
fect union, estabhsh justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for 
the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the 
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and 
establish this Constitution for the United States of America. 

ARTICLE I 

Section I. All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested 
in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate 
and a House of Representatives. 

Sect. II. i. The House of Representatives shall be composed of 
members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, 
and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite 
for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature. 

2. No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained 
to the age of twenty-five years, and been seven years a citizen of the 
United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of 
that State in which he shall be chosen. 

3. Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among 
the several States which may be included within this Union, accord- 
ing to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding 
to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to serv- 
ice for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths 
of all other persons. The actual enumeration shall be made within 
three years after the first meeting of the Congress of the United 
States, and within every subsequent term of ten years, in such man- 
ner as they shall by law direct. The number of Representatives shall 
not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each State shall have 

634 



Constitutio7i of the United States of America 635 

at least one representative ; and until such enumeration shall be made, 
the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to choose three, Massa- 
chusetts eight, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations one, Con- 
necticut five. New York six. New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, 
Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five. South 
Carolina five, and Georgia three. 

4. When vacancies happen in the representation from any State, 
the Executive authority thereof shall issue writs of election to fill 
such vacancies. 

5. The House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and 
other officers ; and shall have the sole power of impeachment. 

Sect. HI. i. The Senate of the United States shall be composed 
of two Senators from each State, chosen by the legislature thereof, 
for six years ; and each Senator shall have one vote. 

2. Immediately after they shall be assembled in consequence of 
the first election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into 
three classes. The seats of the Senators of the first class shall be 
vacated at the expiration of the second year, of the second class at 
the expiration of the fourth year, and of the third class at the expira- 
tion of the sixth year, so that one third may be chosen every second 
year; and if vacancies happen by resignation or otherwise, during 
the recess of the legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may 
make temporary appointments until the next meeting of the legisla- 
ture, which shall then fill such vacancies.^ 

3. No person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to 
the age of thirty years, and been nine years a citizen of the United 
States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that 
State for which he shall be chosen, 

4. The Vice-President of the United States shall be President of 
the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. 

5. The Senate shall choose their other officers, and also a Presi- 
denf/r^ teinpore^ in the absence of the Vice-President, or when he 
shall exercise the office of President of the United States. 

• 6. Th^. Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. 
When sittThg for that purpose, they shall be on oath or affirmation. 
When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice 
shall preside : and no person shall be convicted without the concur- 
rence of two thirds of the members present. 

1 See Amendment XVII. 



636 Appendix II 

7. Judgment in cases of impeachment shall not extend further 
than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy 
any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States : but the 
party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to indictment, 
trial, judgment and punishment, according to law. 

Sect. IV. i. The times, places and manner of holding elections 
for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State 
by the legislature thereof ; but the Congress may at any time by law- 
make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing 
Senators. 

2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and 
such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they 
shall by law appoint a different day. 

Sect. V. i. Each house shall be the judge of the elections, re- 
turns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each 
shall constitute a quorum to do business ; but a smaller number may 
adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the at- 
tendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such pen- 
alties, as each house may provide. 

2. Each house may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish 
its members for disorderly behavior, and with the concurrence of two 
thirds, expel a member. 

3. Each house shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from 
time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their 
judgment require secrecy ; and the yeas and nays of the members of 
either house on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those 
present, be entered on the journal. 

4. Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without 
the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to 
any other place than that in which the two houses shall be sitting. 

Sect. VI. i. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a 
compensation for their services, to be ascertained by law and paid out 
of the treasury of the United States. They shall in all cases except 
treason, felony and breach of the peace, be privileged from arrest 
during their attendance at the session of their respective houses, 
and in going to and returning from the same ; and for any speech 
or debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in any 
other place. 



ConstitiUion of the United States of America 637 

2. No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which 
he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority 
of the United States, which shall have been created, or the emolu- 
ments whereof shall have been increased, during such time ; and no 
person holding any office under the United States shall be a member 
of either house during his continuance in office. 

Sect. VII. i. All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the 
House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur 
with amendments as on other bills. 

2. Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representa- 
tives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to 
the President of the United States ; if he approve he shall sign it, 
but if not he shall return it with his objections to that house in which 
it shall have originated, who shall enter the objections at large on 
their journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such reconsidera- 
tion two thirds of that house shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be 
sent, together with the objections, to the other house, by which it 
shall likewise be reconsidered, and, if approved by two thirds of that 
house, it shall become a law. But in all such cases the votes of both 
houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the 
persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the jour- 
nal of each house respectively. If any bill shall not be returned by 
the President within ten days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have 
been presented to him, the same shall be a law, in like manner as if 
he had signed it, unless the Congress by their adjournment prevent 
its return, in which case it shall not be a law. 

3. Every order, resolution, or vote to which the concurrence of 
the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except 
on a question of adjournment) shall be presented to the President of 
the United States ; and before the same shall take effect, shall be 
approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by 
two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to 
the rules and limitations prescribed in the case of a bill. 

Sect. VIII. The Congress shall have power 

I. To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay 
the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare 
of the United States ; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be 
uniform throughout the United States ; 



638 Appendix II 

2. To borrow money on the credit of the United States ; 

3. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the 
several States, and with the Indian tribes; 

4. To establish an uniform rule of naturalization, and uni- 
form laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United 
States ; 

5. To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, 
and fix the standard of weights and measures ; 

6. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities 
and current coin of the United States ; 

7. To establish post offices and post roads ; 

8. To promote the progress of science and useful arts by secur- 
ing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right 
to their respective writings and discoveries ; 

9. To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court ; 

10. To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the 
high seas and offences against the law of nations ; 

1 1 . To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make 
rules concerning captures on land and water ; 

1 2. To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money 
to that use shall be for a longer term than two years ; 

13. To provide and maintain a navy ; 

14. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land 
and naval forces ; 

15. To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of 
the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions ; 

1 6. To provide for organizing, arming and disciplining the militia, 
and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the 
service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively the 
appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia 
according to the discipline prescribed by Congress ; 

17. To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over 
such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of 
particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat 
of government of the United States, and to exercise like authority 
over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the 
State, in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, 
arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings ; — and 



ConstitiLtion of the United States of America 639 

18. To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for 
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers 
vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, 
or in any department or office thereof. 

Sect. IX. i. The migration or importation of such persons as 
any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit shall not 
be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1 808 ; but a tax or 
duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding $10 for 
each person. 

2. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be sus- 
pended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public 
safety may require it. 

3. No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. 

4. No capitation, or other direct, tax shall be laid, unless in pro- 
portion to the census or enumeration herein before directed to be 
taken. 

5. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any 
State. 

6. No preference shall be given by any regulation of commerce 
or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another : nor 
shall vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, 
or pay duties in another. 

7. No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence 
of appropriations made by law ; and a regular statement and account 
of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be pub- 
lished from time to time. 

8. No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States : and 
no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, 
without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolu- 
ment, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, 
or foreign state. 

Sect. X. i. No State shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or con- 
federation ; grant letters of marque and reprisal ; coin money ; emit 
bills of credit ; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in 
payment of debts ; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law 
impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any tide of nobility. 

2. No State shall, without the consent of the Congress, lay any 
imposts or duties on imports or exports, except what may be 



640 Appoidix II 

absolutely necessary for executing its inspection laws : and the net 
produce of all duties and imposts, laid by any State on imports or 
exports, shall be for the use of the treasury of the United States; 
and all such laws shall be subject to the revision and control of 
the Congress. 

3. No State shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty 
of tonnage, keep troops, or ships of war in time of peace, enter into 
any agreement or compact with another State, or with a foreign 
power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such im- 
minent danger as will not admit of delay. 

ARTICLE II 

Section I. i. The executive power shall be vested in a President 
of the United States of America. He shall hold his office during the 
term of four years, and together with the Vice-President, chosen 
for the same term, be elected as follows : 

2. Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature 
thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole num- 
ber of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be 
entided in the Congress; but no Senator or Representative, or 
person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, 
shall be appointed an elector. 

[The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by 
ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhab- 
itant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a list 
of all the persons voted for, and of the number of votes for each; 
which list they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat 
of government of the United States, directed to the President of the 
Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the 
Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and 
the votes shall then be counted. The person having the greatest 
number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority 
of the whole number of electors appointed ; and if there be more 
than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of 
votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose 
by ballot one of them for President ; and if no person have a majority, 
then from the five highest on the list the said house shall in like manner 



Constitution of the United States of Ainerica 641 

choose the President. But in choosing the President the votes 
shall be taken by States, the representation from each State having 
one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or 
members from two thirds of the States, and a majority of all the 
States shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice 
of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of 
the electors shall be the Vice-President. But if there should remain 
two or more who have equal votes, the Senate shall choose from 
them by ballot the Vice-President.] 

3. The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, 
and the day on which they shall give their votes ; which day shall 
be the same throughout the United States. 

4. No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the 
United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall 
be eligible to the office of President ; neither shall any person be 
eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty- 
five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United 
States. 

5. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his 
death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of 
the said office, the same shall devolve on the Vice-President, and the 
Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resig- 
nation, or inability, both of the President and Vice-President, de- 
claring what officer shall then act as President, and such officer shall 
act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a President shall 
be elected. 

6. The President shall, at stated times, receive for his services, 
a compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished 
during the period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall 
not receive within that period any other emolument from the United 
States, or any of them. 

7. Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take 
the following oath or affirmation : — "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) 
that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United 
States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and 
defend the Constitution of the United States." 

Sect. II. i. The President shall be commander in chief of the 
army and navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several 



642 Appendix II 

States, when called into the actual service of the United States ; he 
may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each 
of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties 
of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves 
and pardons for offences against the United States, except in cases 
of impeachment. 

2. He shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of 
the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators 
present concur ; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice 
and consent of the Senate, shall 'appoint ambassadors, other public 
ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other 
officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein 
otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law : but 
the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior 
officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts 
of law, or in the heads of departments. 

3. The President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that 
may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commis- 
sions which shall expire at the end of their next session. 

Sect. III. He shall from time to time give to the Congress in- 
formation of the state of the Union, and recommend to their con- 
sideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient ; 
he may, on extraordinary occasions, convene both houses, or either 
of them, and in case of disagreement between them, with respect to 
the time of adjournment, he may adjourn them to such time as he 
shall think proper; he shall receive ambassadors and other public 
ministers; he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed, 
and shall commission all the officers of the United States. 

Sect. IV. The President, Vice-President and all civil officers of 
the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment 
for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and 
misdemeanors. 

ARTICLE III 

Section I. i. The judicial power of the United States, shall be 
vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as Con- 
gress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both 
of the Supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during 



Constihitio7t of the United States of America 643 

good behavior, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a 
compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance 
in office. 

Sect. II. i. The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law 
and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United 
States, and treaties made or which shall be made, under their authority; 

— to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and con- 
suls ; — to all cases of admiralty jurisdiction ; — to controversies to 
which the United States shall be a party ; — to controversies between 
two or more States ; — between a State and citizens of another State ; 

— between citizens of different States ; — between citizens of the same 
State claiming lands under grants of different States, and between a 
State, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects. 

2. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and 
consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the Supreme 
Court shall have original jurisdiction. In all the other cases before 
mentioned, the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both 
as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations 
as the Congress shall make. 

3. The trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall 
be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where the said, 
crimes shall have been committed ; but when not committed within 
any State, the trial shall be at such place or places as the Congress 
may by law have directed. 

i^x^ECT. III. I. Treason against the United States shall consist 

' only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, 

giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason 

unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on 

confession in open court. 

2. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of 
treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, 
or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted. 

ARTICLE IV 

Section I. Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to 
the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State. 
And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in 



644 Appendix II 

which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the 
effect thereof. 

Sect. II. i. The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all 
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. 

2. A person charged in any State with treason, felony, or other 
crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another State, 
shall on demand of the executive authority of the State from which 
he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction 
of the crime. 

3. No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws 
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or 
regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but 
shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or 
labor may be due. 

Sect. III. i. New States may be admitted by the Congress into 
this Union ; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the 
jurisdiction of any other State ; nor any State be formed by the junc- 
tion of two or more States, or parts of States, without the consent 
of the legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress. 

2. The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all 
needful rules and regulations respecting the territory or other property 
belonging to the United States ; and nothing in this Constitution 
shall be so construed as to prejudice any claims of the United States, 
or of any particular State. 

Sect. IV. The United States shall guarantee to every State in 
this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each 
, of them against invasion ; and on application of the legislature, or 
of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against 
domestic violence. 

ARTICLE V 

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both houses shall deem it 
necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the 
application of the legislatures of two thirds of the several States, 
shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either 
case shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Consti- 
tution, when ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the sev- 
eral States, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or 



Constitution of the United States of America 645 

the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; 
provided that no amendments which may be made prior to the year 
one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the 
first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article ; and 
that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal 
suffrage in the Senate. 

ARTICLE VI 

1 . All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before the 
adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United 
States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation. 

2. This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which 
shall be made in pursuance thereof ; and all treaties made, or which 
shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the 
supreme law of the land ; and the judges in every State shall be 
bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to 
the contrary notwithstanding. 

■3. The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the 
members of the several State legislatures, and all executive and judi- 
cial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall 
be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution ; but 
no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office 
or public trust under the United States. 

ARTICLE VII 

The ratification of the conventions of nine States, shall be suffi- 
cient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States 
so ratifying the same. 

Done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present, 
the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one 
thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven and of the Independ- 
ence of the United States of America the twelfth. In witness 
whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names. 

[Signed by] 0° Washington 

Fresidt and Deputy from Virginia 



646 



Appendix II 



NEW HAMPSHIRE 
John Langdon 
Nicholas Oilman 

MASSACHUSETTS 
Nathaniel Gorham 
RuFus King 

CONNECTICUT 

Wm. Saml. Johnson 
Roger Sherman 

NEW YORK 
Alexander Hamilton 

NEW JERSEY 
Wil: Livingston 
David Brearley 
Wm : Paterson 
Jona: Dayton 



PENNSYLVANIA 
B Franklin 
Thomas Mifflin 
RoBT. Morris 
Geo. Clymer 
Tho. Fitz Simons 
Jared Ingersoll 
James Wilson 
Gouv Morris 

DELAWARE 
Geo: Read 

Gunning Bedford, Jun. 
John Dickinson 
Richard Bassett 
Jaco: Broom 

MARYLAND 
James McHenry 
Dan of St. Thos. Jenifer 
Danl Carroll 



VIRGINIA 

John Blair 

James Madison, Jr. 

NORTH CAROLINA 
Wm. Blount 

RiCHD. DOBBS SpAIGHT 

Hu Williamson 

SOUTH CAROLINA 
J. Rutledge 
Charles Cotesworth 

PiNCKNEY 

Charles Pinckney 
Pierce Butler 

GEORGIA 

William Few 
Abr Baldwin 



Attest : William Jackson, Secretary 



Articles in Addition to and Amendment of the Constitu- 
tion OF THE United States of America, proposed by Con- 
gress, AND RATIFIED BY THE LEGISLATURES OF THE SEVERAL 

States, Pursuant to the Fifth Article of the Original 
Constitution 

Article I. Congress shall make no law respecting an establish- 
ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ; or abridg- 
ing the freedom of speech, or of the press ; or the right of the people 
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress 
of grievances. 

Article II. A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the se- 
curity of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear 
arms, shall not be infringed. 

Article III. No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in 
any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but 
in a manner to be prescribed by law. 

Article IV. The right of the people to be secure in their per- 
sons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and 
seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue but upon 
probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly 



Constitutioii of the United States of America 647 

describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to 
be seized. 

Article V. No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or 
otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of 
a grand jury except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or 
in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; 
nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put 
in jeopardy of life or limb ; nor shall be compelled in any criminal 
case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, 
or property, without due process of law ; nor shall private property 
be taken for public use without just compensation. 

Article VI. In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy 
the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State 
and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which dis- 
trict shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed 
of the nature and cause of the accusation ; to be .confronted with the 
witnesses against him ; to have compulsory process for obtaining 
witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his 
defence. 

Article VII. In suits at common law, where the value in contro- 
versy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be 
preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise re-exam- 
ined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules 
of the common law. 

Article VIII. Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive 
fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. 

Article IX. The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain 
rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained 
by the people. 

Article X. The powers not delegated to the United States by 
the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to 
the States respectively, or to the people. 

Article XI. The judicial power of the United States shall not 
be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or 
prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another 
State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state. 

Article XII. The electors shall meet in their respective States, 
and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, 



648 Appendix II 

at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same State with them- 
selves ; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as 
President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-Pres- 
ident, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as 
President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the 
number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and 
transmit sealed to the seat of government of the United States, 
directed to the President of the Senate ; — the President of the 
Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Repre- 
sentatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be 
counted ; — the person having the greatest number of votes for 
President shall be the President, if such number be a majority of 
the whole number of electors appointed ; and if no person have such 
majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not 
exceeding three 'on the list of those voted for as President, the 
House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the 
President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken 
by States, the representation from each State having one vote; a 
quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from 
two thirds of the States, and a majority of all the States shall be 
necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall 
not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve 
upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the 
Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or 
other constitutional disability of the President. — The person having 
the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice- 
President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of elec- 
tors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two 
highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-Presi- 
dent; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two thirds of the 
whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall 
be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to 
the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of 
the United States. 

Article XHI.^ Section i. Neither slavery nor involuntary servi- 
tude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have 
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any 

place subject to their jurisdiction. 

1 Adopted, 1865. 



Constitution of tJie United States of America 649 

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by 
appropriate legislation. 

Article XIV. ^ Section i. All persons born or naturalized in the 
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of 
the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State 
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or 
immunities of citizens of the United States ; nor shall any State de- 
prive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of 
law ; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protec- 
tion of the laws. 

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several 
States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole 
number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But 
when the right to vote at any election for the choice of Electors for 
President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives 
in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the 
members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male in- 
habitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens 
of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation 
in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall 
be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens 
shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of 
age in such State. 

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in 
Congress, or Elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any 
office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, 
who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or 
as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legis- 
lature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support 
the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insur- 
rection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the 
enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each 
house, remove such disability. 

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, 
authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions 
and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, 
shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any 
State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of 
1 Adopted, 1S6S. 



650 Appendix II 

insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for 
the loss or emancipation of any slave ; but all such debts, obliga- 
tions, and claims shall be held illegal and void. 

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce by appro- 
priate legislation the provisions of this article. 

Article XV. ^ Section i. The right of citizens of the United 
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States 
or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude. 

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article 
by appropriate legislation. 

Article XVI. ^ The Congress shall have power to lay and collect 
taxes on incomes from whatever source derived, without apportion- 
ment among the several States, and without regard to any census 
or enumeration. 

Article XVI I. ^ The Senate of the United States shall be com- 
posed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, 
for six years ; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors 
in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for the electors of 
the most numerous branch of the state legislatures. 

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the 
Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of 
election to fill such vacancies : 

Provided^ That the legislature of any State may empower the ex- 
ecutive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill 
the vacancies by election, as the legislature may direct. 

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election 
or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the 
Constitution. 
.,,,^ 1 Ado2ted, 1870. 2 Adopted, 1913. 

^ l\irii 1^1% 1)1 t 




INDEX 



Abolitionists, 31 6-32 5; societies of, 
320, 32 1 ftn. I ; in Congress, 32 1 ; 
petitions of, 322; contest over 
mails, 323, 327 ; on annexation 
of Texas, 348 ; strengthened in 
1854, 384 

Acadia, 90, 93, 97 ftn. 2 

Adams, Charles Francis, 493 ftn. i, 
498, 499 

Adams, John, leader in Massachu- 
setts, 121 ; loyalty to England, 
129 ; mission to Paris, 1 50 ; treats 
with Pitt, 152 ; defeats noninter- 
course, 197 ; elected President, 
200 ; quarrel with France, 200- 
201 ; peace with Napoleon, 202 ; 
defeated by Jefferson, 203; re- 
tires, 205 

Adams, John Quincy, wSecretary 
of State, 239 ; Monroe Doctrine, 
242 ; on internal improvements, 
251; career, 252; presidential 
candidate i.n 1824, 258; elected 
by the House, 259; difficulties 
as President, 259-266; defeated 
by Jackson, 266 ; member of 
House, 267 ; on Missouri, 311 ; 
fights gag resolutions, 322 ; on 
Texas, 335 

Adams, Samuel, oration at Harvard 
College, III ; circular letter, 
117; on Boston Massacre, 118; 
Committees of Correspondence, 
121 ; flight to Lexington, 124 

Age of Reason, 132 

Aguinaldo, Emilio, 582, 583 

AlabaiJia claims, 498 

Alamance, battle of, 133 ftn. i 

Alamo, massacre of, 334 

Alaska, Russian, 236 ; boundary 
claim, 241 ; purchase of, 499, 502 

Albany, Dutch post, 59 ; Congress 
of, 96 ; plan of union, 96 



63. 



Aldrich, Nelson M., 614 

Alexander VI, bull of, 9 

Alger, Richard A., 580 ftn. i 

Alien and Sedition Acts, 202 

Allen, Ethan, 127 

Allison, Wilham B., 518 

Altgelt, J. P., 564 

Amendments: XH, 178 ftn. i, 204 ; 
I-XV, 180, 181; XH, 259; I, 
321 ; proposed on slavery, 418 
ftn.;Xni, 474;XIV, 483, 484; 
V-VI, 489 

America, discovery, 3-9 ; naming, 
11-13 

American Association, 122 

American System, 294, 536 

Ames, Fisher, 609 

Amherst, Jeffrey, loi, 102 

Anaconda policy, 456 

Anderson, Major Robert, 421-424 

Andre, Major John, 141, 142 

Andros, Sir Edmund, 51 

Annapolis Convention, 167 

Anne, Queen, 304 

Annexation of Texas, 335-348 

Antietam, battle of, 448 

Anti-imperialists, 583, 585ftn. 1,628 

Antimasons, 292, 293 

Antislavery societies, 307, 316 

Antislavery sentiment in eight- 
eenth century, 326 

Antislavery poems, 404 

Apia, 553, 554 ^ ^ 

Appeal of the Independent Demo- 
crats, 381 

Appomattox, 464 

Apprentice laws, 480 

Arbitration, over Venezuela, 567 ; 
treaty with England, 589 ftn. 2 ; 
Hague Court of, 607 

Arbitration treaty with England, 
589 ftn. 2 [ftn. I 

Arizona admitted to Union, 615 



652 



Ijidex 



Arkansas admitted to Union, 322 
ftn.3 

Armistead, General, 451 

Arnold, Benedict, 130, 138, 141,142 

Arthur, Chester A., dismissed by- 
Hayes, 516; Vice President, 522; 
President, 524 ; on corruption, 
524 ftn. 2 

Articles of Confederation, 160, 161, 
162, 166, 173 

Ashburton, Lord, 337 

Assumption, 190 

Astor, John Jacob, 331 

Atkinson, Edward, 585 ftn. i 

Atlanta, capture of, 460 

Aztec civilization, 15, 16 

Babcock, Secretary, 492 

Bacon, Nathaniel, 34 

Bacon, Roger, 5 ftn. i 

Balboa, 14 ftn. i 

Baltimore, in War of 18 12, 221 ; in 

Civil War, 427 
lialtimore, Lord, 53-56 
Bank, National, first, 191 ; second, 

232, 282-286, 298, 337 
Banks, N. P., 392 
Banks, state, 232; "pet," 286; 

"wildcat," 287; national, 453 

ftn. I 
Barbary States, 163 
Bayard, Thomas F., 534 ftn. i 
Beauregard, General, 424, 439 
Belknap, Secretary, 492 
Bell, John, 411 
Bellomont, Earl of, 73, 94 
Benton, Thomas H., 256, 262, 276, 

286, 330, 331 
Bering Sea, 554, 555 
Berkeley, Governor William, 62 
Biddle, Nicholas, 284 
Bienville, Celoron de, 95 
Bimetallism, 570 
Binney, Horace, 324 
Birney, J. G., 324, 327, 341 
Bishops, in America, in 
Black codes, 481 
Black Republicans, 408 
Black Warrior affair, 373 
Bladensburg, 221 
Blaine, James G., rejected in 1876, 

495 ftn. I ; Secretary of State, 



523, 527, 545, 553-555; on civil 
service, 526; opposition to, in 
1884, 527, 528 ; contrasted with 
Cleveland, 529 ; defeat in 1884, 
530; resignation and death, 556 

Blaire, F. P., Jr., 426 

Bland, Richard P., 518, 568 

Bland- AlHson Act, 518 

Blockade of South, 442 

Bolivar, Simon, 239 

Boiihotiime Richard^ 140 

Bonus Bill, 249, 250 

Boone, Daniel, 145, 149 

Border ruffians, 389 

Boston, spirit of, 120; punished 
by England, 127 ; hostility of, to 
Garrison, 319 

Boston Massacre, 118, 119 

Boston Neios Letter, 77, 78 

Boston Tea Party, 120 

Boxers, 589 

Braddocic, General, 99 

Bradford, Governor, 37, 38, 42 

Bradley, Justice, 496 

Bragg, General, 454, 455 ftn. i, 
456-458 

Brandy wine Creek, battle of, 138 

Breckinridge, John C, 410 

Brooks, Preston, 392, 393 

Brougham, Lord, 269 

Brown, Jacob, 220 

Brown, John, 390, 406, 407, 
408 ftn. I, 429 

Bryan, William J., nominated in 
1896, 568; career, 569; defeat, 
571; defeat in 1900, 584; de- 
feat in 1908, 607 ; Secretary of 
State in 191 3, 616 ftn. 2 

Bryant, William C, 235 

Bryce, James, 617 

Buchanan, James, minister to Eng- 
land, 373 ; President, 395 ; and 
Kansas, 396-399; weakness in 
1860-1861, 416, 422, 423 

Buell, General, 454, 455 ftn. i 

Buena Vista, battle of, 345 

Buffalo Exposition of 1901, 592 

Bull Run, first battle, 439 ; second 
battle, 447 

Bunau-Varilla Treaty, 602 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 130 

Burgess, J. W., 323 ftn. i 



Index 



653 



Burgesses, House of, Virginia, 32, 

1 14, 1 18, 122 
Burke, Edmund, 108, 122, 521 
Burlingame Treaty, 5i6ftn. 2 
Burnet, Governor, 94 
Burns, Anthony, 385 
Burnside, General, 448 
Burr, Aaron, 203, 212 
Bustamante, President, 333 
Butler, A. P., 392 
Butler, Benjamin F., 446 
Byrd, William, 58 ftn. i 

Cabeza de Vaca, 16 

Cabot, John, 1 1 

Calhoun, John C, censures Jack- 
son, 239 ; expansionist, 249, 
250; career, 254, 256; Vice 
President, 260 ; " Exposition and 
Protest," 273, 274 ; senator, 282 ; 
on abolitionists, 321 ; opinions 
on slavery, 322-325 ; Secretary 
of State, 339 ; on Compromise 
of 1850, 360; death, 360 

California, 344, 350, 356, 357, 375 

Calvert, Cecilius, 55 

Calvert, George, 53 

Canada, 84, 85, 91, 95, 102, iii, 

220, 231, 615 ftn. T 

Canal, Panama, 371, 375, 600-603 

Canal, Suez, 603 ftn. i 

Canning, George, 241 

Cannon, Joseph G., 614 

Cape Verde Islands, 11, 579 

Captains of industry, 538 

Carnegie, Andrew, 543 ftn. 2, 
607 ftn. I 

Carolinas, founded, 57 ; condition, 
58; in Revolutionary War, 140 

Carpetbaggers, 480 ftn. i, 487 

Carteret, George, 63 

Cartier, Jacques, 20, 82, 83 

Cass, Lewis, 354, 355, 396 

Caucus, 178 ftn. 2, 258 

Cavaliers, 33 

Cavite, 577 

Centennial Exposition, 500, 501 

Cervera, Admiral, 579 

Champlain, Lake, 84 ; battle on, 
220 

Champlain, Samuel de, 83, 84, 86 

Chancellorsville, battle of, 448 



Chapultepec, battle of, 345 

Charles I, -t^-t^ 

Charles II, 33, 35, 47, 49, 50, 60, 
63, 90, 91, 120 

Charleston, founded, 57 ; in Revo- 
lutionary War, 140 ; secession, 
413 ; celebration, 467 

Charlestown, 130 

Chase, Salmon P., 362, 381, 452, 
453 ftn. I, 460, 460 ftn. I 

Chatham, Earl of, 117 

Chattanooga, battle of, 455, 456,457 

Cherokees, 146 

Chesapeake affair, 216 

Cheves, 218 

Chicago, 563 

Chickamauga, battle of, 456 

Child labor, 625 ftn. 2, 628 

Chile, 555 

China, 589, 590 

Chinese Exclusion Act, 516 ftn. 2 

Chowan River, 57 

Cibola, 17 

Cipango, 6 

Cities, American, 617, 618 ftn. i 

Civil Rights Bill, 483 ftn. i 

Civil Service, 524, 525, 526, 532, 
533, 594 ftn. I 

Civil War, 436-467, 475, 475 ftn. 2, 

505' 507 

Claiborne, Governor, 237 

Claiborne, William, 85 

Clark, Champ, 616 

Clark, Jonas, 124 

Clark, George Rogers, 148, 149 

Clay, Henry, in Congress, 218; 
and War of 1812, 219, 220; 
career, 256, 257; presidential 
candidate in 1824, 258; Secre- 
tary of State, 259 ; Compromise 
of 1833, 282; and Bank, 284; 
defeated by Jackson, 285; Mis- 
souri Compromise, 312; rela- 
tions with Tyler, 336 ftn. i ; 
nominated in 1844, 339; on 
Texas, 340, 350 ; defeat in 1844, 
341 ; Compromise of 1850, 358 ; 
death, 367 

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 371, 600 

Cleveland, Grover, career, 528, 
529; President, 530; poHcy, 
533' 534 ; on civil service, 



654 



Index 



534ftn. I, 594ftn. i; financial 



measures, 535-53J 



attitude 



toward labor, 539, 540 ; defeat 
in 18S8, 544 ; reelection in 1892, 
557; difficult problems, 558; 
gold supply, 559, 560 ; tariff 
policy, 560, 561 ; Pullman strike, 
563 ; on Hawaii, 565 ; rejected in 
1896, 578 

Clinton, De Witt, 254 

Clinton, George, 136, 140, 141, 
223 

Coahuila, 333 

Colbert, 90 

Cold Harbor, battle of, 459, 
459 ftn. 2 

Colombia, 601 

Colonies, table of, 69 ; in eight- 
eenth century, 72 ; characteris- 
tics, 79 

Columbia, S.C., 281 

Columbus, 4-9 

"Common Sense," 131, 132 

Compromise of 1850, 358, 359, 
363, 431 ftn. I 

Confederacy, Southern, formation, 
414; enlargement, 425, 426; 
resources, 431 ; collapse, 466 

Congress, Continental, 122, 123, 
127, 160; of the Confederation, 
164, 165 ; of United States, 174- 
188 

Conkling, Roscoe, 516, 522, 523, 
530 ftn. I 

Connecticut, settled, 44 ; charter, 
47 ; claimed by Dutch, 60 

Conservation, 597, 599 

Constitution, 173-182; slavery in, 
307 ; denounced by Garrison, 
320 

Constitutional Convention, 167- 
182 

Constitutional Union Party, 411 

" Contraband," 469 

Conventions, national nominating, 
292, 293 

Cooke, Jay, 494 ftn. 2 

Cooper, James Fenimore, 235 

Cooper, Peter, 514 

Cooper, Thomas, 271 

Corinth, 445 

Cornell, Alonzo B., 516 



Cornwallis, Lord, 137, 141, 142, 

143' 150 
Coronado, 17 
"Corrupt Bargain" of 1824, 259, 

260 
Cortez, Hernando, 15, 16 
Cotton, 247, 270, 369, 431, 442 
Cotton gin, 306, 308 ftn. i 
Cotton, John, 40 
Coupon bonds, 452 
Coiireicrs de bois, 85 
Court, see Supreme Court 
Cowpens, 141 
Coxey, Jacob, 562 
iwf< 

258 

Credit Mobilier, 512, 513 
Crime of 1873, 5^7 ^tn, 2, 532 
Crittenden, J. J., 417 
Crown Point, 94 
Cuba, 7, 15, 372, 373, 500, 574, 

575' 576, 578, 582, 586 
Cullom Act, 542 

Curtis, George W., 491 ftn. 4, 52S 
Custer, George A., 517 ftn. i, 532 
Czolgosz, 593 

Dale, Governor Thomas, 31 

Dallas, Secretary, 232 

Dark horse, 340, 367 

Dartmouth College Case, 234 

Davenport, John, 47 

Davis, Jefferson, on Oregon, 353; 
on Kansas, 392 ; and Douglas, 
402 ; resolutions, 408 ; Presi- 
dent of Confederacy, 414; 
message, 425 ftn. i ; escape 
from Richmond, 464 ; impris- 
oned, 466 ftn. 2, 477 ftn. I 

Dawes Bill, 548 

Day, Judge William R., 590 ftn. i 

Debs, Eugene V., 563, 616 ftn. i 

Declaration of Independence, 133- 

135 
Delaware, 66, 170 
De la Warre, Lord, 31 
Demarcation line, ii 
Democracy, 609 
Democratic party, under Jackson, 

291, 292 ; and Civil War, 409, 

435 ftn. 2 ; victory in 1874, 495 ; 

in 1884, 529, 530; in 1892, 557; 



Index 



655 



radicals, 564, 567; in 1896, 568; 

split, 571; in 1912, 616 [265 
Democratic-Republican Party, 192, 
Des Moines, 617 
De Soto, 16, 17 

Detroit, 89, 220 [ftn. i 

Dewey, George, 577, 581, 582, 589 
Diaz, Bartholomew, 4 
Dickenson, John, 128, 161 
Dingley Bill, 590 
Dinwiddle, Governor, 96, 97 
Directory, French, 2t)0 
District of Columbia, 206 ftn. i, 

359. 363 

Dixie, 430 

Dongan, Thomas, 91 

Douglas, Stephen A., on Kansas- 
Nebraska Act, 380-383, 387 ; on 
Lecompton Fraud, 398, 399; de- 
bates with Lincoln, 399-402 ; 
nominated in i860, 410; vote 
for, 412 ; supports Lincoln, 424 

Draft riots, 448, 476 

Drake, Sir Francis, 21 

Dred Scott decision, 396, 397 

Duke's Laws, 61 

Duquesne, Fort, 89, 97, loi 

Dutch in America, 59, 61, 81 

East India Company, 120 

Education, in colonies, 77; in 
United States, 624 ftn. i, 625 

Elastic clause, 181 

El Caney, 580 

Election of 1800, 203; of 1824, 
258, 259; of 1840, 296, 297; of 
i860, 411, 412 ; of 1876, 496; of 
1884, 530; of 1896, 571 , of 1900, 
584 ; of 1904, 605 ; of 1908, 607 ; 
of 191 2, 616 ftn. I 

Electoral commission of 1877, 496 

Electors, presidential, 178 

Elkins Bill, 542 

Emancipation Proclamation, 472, 

474 
Embargo, 216 
Emerson, R. W., 408 ftn. i 
Emigrant Aid Society, 388 
Endicott, John, 40 
Endless chain, 559 
England, see Great Britain 
Enumerated articles, 70 



Era of good feeling, 231, 251 
Ericsson, John, 443 
Erie Canal, 254, 264 
Erie, Lake, battle of, 220 
" Evangeline," 97 ftn. 3 
Everett, Edward, 389 
" Exposition and Protest " of Cal- 
houn, 273, 

Faneuil Hall, 118 
Farmers' Alliance, 556 
Farragut, David A., 446, 461 
Federal Election Law, see Force 

Bill 
"Federalist, The," 172 
Federalists, 192, 203, 205, 211, 

223, 224 
Federation of Labor, American, 

556 

" Fifty-four Forty or Fight," 342 

Filipinos, 582, 583 

Fillmore, Millard, 362 

Finaeus, map of, 18 

Fish, Hamilton, 500 

Fisheries, treaty, 1 52 

Florida, 15, 103, 237-340, 322ftn.3 

Floyd, Secretary, 416, 420 

Foote Resolution, 279 

Force Bill, of 1833, 282; of 1871, 
492 ftn. I ; of 1890, 550 

Fort Donelson, 444 

Fort Henry, 444 

Fort Jackson, 446 

Fort Leavenworth, 344 

Fort Le Boeuf, 97 

Fort McHenry, 221 

Fort Necessity, 97 

Fort Pitt, 10 1 

Fort St. Philip, 446 » 

Fort Sumter, 421, 423-425 

Fort Ticonderoga, 127 

Fort Venango, 97 

Fort William Henry, 99 

Forty-niners, 357 

France, early explorations, 20, 82 ; 
rule in Canada, 85; alliance of 
1778, 139, 150; aid in Revolu- 
tionary War, 151 ; quarrel with 
United States, 200-202 

Franklin, Benjamin, 65 ; on colo- 
nies, 76 ; postmaster-general, 77 ; 
Albany Congress, 96 ; on Stamp 



656 



Index 



Act, 113; onRevolution, 129, 132; 

Declaration of Independence, 

133 ; to Vergennes, 139 ; minister 

to France, i 50, i 52 ; Articles of 

Confederation, 160; president 

antislavery society, 307 
Fredericksburg, battle of, 448 
Freedman's Bureau, 481 ftn. i, 483 

ftn. I 
Freeport Doctrine, 401 
Free-Soil party, 355, 358 
Fremont, J. C, 352, 375, 393, 395, 

470 
French and Indian wars, 93 ftn. i, 

98 
French Revolution, 194 
Friends (Quakers), 63, 63 ftn. i, 

305, 305 ftn. 2 
Fiontenac, Count, 89, 92 
Frye, William B., 214 ftn. i 
Fulton, Robert, 234, 276 
Fundamental Constitutions, 46 
Fugitive Slave Law, 309, 364, 365, 

385 

Gadsden Purchase, 349 ftn. i 
Gag resolutions, 324, 327 
Gage, Governor, 123-125 
Gallatin, Albert, 207, 253 
Galveston, 615 
Garfield, James A., 522-524 
Garland, William H., 543 ftn. i 
Garrison, William Lloyd, 317-320, 

467 
Gates, General, 138, 141 
Geary, Governor, 395 
Genet, Citizen, 195, 196 
Geneva tribunal, 498, 499 
George, Henry, 593 ftn. i 
George, King, I, 58 
George, King, II, 66 
George, King, III, 119, 121, 128, 

13O' 131 
Georgia, founded, 66, d-] ; western 

claims, 162; Indian troubles, 264, 

265 ; Sherman's march, 462, 463 
Germaine, Lord George, 137 
Germantown, 65, 138, 305 
Germany, quarrel with, 553, 554 
Gerry, Elbridge, 201 
Gettysburg, battle of, 449-451, 

454 ftn. 2 



Ghent, Treaty of, 222 

Giddings, Joshua, 324 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 21 

Gist, Christopher, 95 

Gold, discovery, 356; supply in 

1893. 558 

Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 35, 39, 
48 

Gorman, A. P., 561 

Grand Model, the, 57 

Grangers, 513, 532, 541 

Grant, Ulysses S., in the West, 
444 ff. ; takes Vicksburg, 451; 
lieutenant general, 458 ; Rich- 
mond campaign, 459-466; as 
President, 491, 492; reelection, 
494 ; influenced by radicals, 
511 ; third-term movement, 522, 
532 

Great Britain, holds fur posts, 
1^3' 195; strained relations 
1783-1794, 196, 197; Orders in 
Council, 213, 218, 219; War of 
1812, 219 ff. ; interests in 
South America, 241 ; commer- 
cial rivalry, 269 ; slave trade, 
304 ; emancipation in colonies, 
325; Oregon boundary, 338, 
342; Texas question, 338 ; Tre7it 
affair, 442 ; opinion on Civil 
War, 454 ; Alabama claims, 
498, 499; seal fisheries, 554; 
Venezuela, 566 ; friendship since 
1898, 589, 589 ftn. I, 615 ftn. I 

Great Lakes, 152, 163 

Great Meadows, battle of, 97 

Greeley,Horace,384,423,47iftn.2, 

493' 494 
Greenback party, 514 
Greene, General Nathanael, 140 
Grenville, George, 112 
Guadalupe-Hidalgo, Treaty of, 347 
Guiteau, Charles, 524 

Hague Court, 607 ftn. i, 626 

Half-breeds, 522 ftn. i 

Halifax, 118 

Halleck, General H. W., 444, 446 

Hamilton, Alexander, proposes 
convention, 167 ; ideas of gov 
ernment, 169; efforts for ratifi- 
cation, 171 ; Secretary of the 



Index 



6s7 



Treasury, 187 ; on debt, 189 ; 
on tariff, 190; on Bank, 191; 
leader of Federalists, 192 ; on 
Jay Treaty, 199; killed by Burr, 
212 
Hamilton, Andrew, 78 
Hamilton, Colonel, 148, 149 
Hampton Roads, battle, 443; con- 
ference, 464 
Hancock, General W. S., 451, 522 
Hancock, John, 121, 124 
Hanna, Marcus A., 569, 590 ftn. i, 

605 
Harpers Ferry, 406 
Harrisburg Convention, 271 
Harrison, Benjamin, 543, 544, 556, 

565 
Harrison, William H., 218, 220, 

245, 295, 296, 297, 336 
Hartford, 46 

Hartford Convention, 223, 224 
Harvard College, 72 ftn. i, jt,, 

III 
Havana, 102, 586 ftn. i 
Hawaiian Islands, 565, 566, 

566 ftn. I 
Hawkins, Sir John, 21 
Hay, John, 589, 590 ftn. i, 600 
Hay-Herran Treaty, 601 
Hayes, R. B., 495, 496, 515, 

516 ftn. I, 518, 522 
Haymarket Square riot, 539 ftn. 2 
Hayne, Robert Y., 273, 280 
Hayti, 8 

Helper, Hinton R., 434 
Henry, Patrick, 114, 118, 127, 147, 

148, 202 
Hepburn Bill, 542, 606 
Herkimer, General, 137 
Hessians, 137 
Hill, David B., 544, 557 
Holy Alliance, 241, 242 
Homestead Act, 512, 532 
Hong-Kong, 577 
Hood, General, 460, 462, 463 
Hooker, General Joseph, 448, 

457 
Hooker, Thomas, 45 
Houston, Sam, 334, 335 
Howe, General William, 135, 136, 

137, 138 
Hudson, Henry, 59 



Hudson Bay Company, 87, 90, 331 
Hudson River, 60, 137 
Huerta, 616 ftn. 2 
Huguenots, 72 
Hull, William, 220 
Hiilsemann letter, 370 
Huron, Lake, 86 
Hutchinson, Anne, 47 
Hutchinson, Governor Thomas, 
115, 118, 123 

Immigration, 72, 246, 431, 521, 
620, 622, 626 

Impressment, 197, 215 

Income tax, 561 , 562 ftn. i , 61 6 ftn. 2 

Independent Treasury, 288 

India House, 17 

Indians, 22-25, 42, 47» 59' 65, 83, 
92, 102, 113, 146, 195, 218, 236, 
237, 245, 264, 516, 517 ftn. I, 

548, 549 
Indies, East, 3, 8 [144 

Indies, West, 20, 71, 108, 109, 113, 
Infant industries, 268 
Ingalls, J. J., 613 
Initiative, 612, 613 
Injunction, 564 ftn. i 
Insular cases, 5S7 
Insurgents, 614 
Internal improvements, 264 
Interstate Commerce Act, 542 
Intolerable Acts, 122 
Iowa admitted, 379 
Iroquois, 84, 91, 93 
Irrigation policy, 598 
Irving, Washington, 235 
Italy, quarrel with, 555 

Jackson, Andrew, victory at New 
Orleans, 222 ; campaign in 
Florida, 238, 239; career, 257, 
258; defeated in House, 259; 
elected President, 266 inaugura- 
tion, 274, 275; reign of, 277- 
298 ; character, 278 ; on tariff, 
279; on nullification, 281, 282; 
on Bank, 284-286; censured by 
Senate, 286; specie circular, 
287 ; spoils system, 292 ; oppo- 
sition to, 294 ; opinion on slavery, 
298, 323; on Texas, 335; on 
Mexico, 348 



658 



Index 



Jackson, General T. J. (" Stone- 
wall"), 441 ftn. 2, 447 ftn. I, 
44S ftn. 2 

Jamaica, 150 

James, King, I, 28, 36 

James, King, II, 50, 51, 61, 62 

Jamestown, 29 

Jay, John, 150, 151, 197 

Jay Treaty, 197, 200 

Jefferson, Thomas, Declaration of 
Independence, 133; Secretary 
of State, 187 ; defeated by 
Adams, 200 ; Kentucky resolu- 
tions, 202 ; elected President, 
203, 204; Louisiana Purchase, 
208-211; reelected, 211; em- 
bargo, 216 ; opinion of Jackson, 
257 ; on home industries, 269 ; 
opinions on slavery, 305 ftn. i, 
307, 308 ftn. 2 ; on Missouri 
Compromise, 315 

Jenckes, 525 

Jesuits, 86 

Johnson, Andrew, 446 ftn. i, 477, 
479, 484, 490, 598 

Johnson, Hiram, 616 

Johnston, General A. S., 444, 445 

Johnston, General J. E., 439 ftn. 2, 
45S, 459, 466 ftn. 2 

Joliet, 82 

Jones, John Paul, 139 [States, 179 

Judicial department of United 

Kalm, Peter, iii 
Kanawha River, victory on, 146 
Kansas, 338-395, 437 ftn. 2 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 381, 383, 

384, 387 
Kaskaskia, 148 
Kearny, General, 344 
Kendall, Amos, 323 
Kent Island, 55 

Kentucky, 145, 147, 202, 203, 309 
Key, F. S., 221 
King, Rufus, 253, 254, 311 
King Philip's War, 39 
King's Friends,. 1 28, 129, 150 
Kings Mountain, 141 
Klondike, 590 

Knights of Labor, 538, 539, 573 
Know-Nothing party, 386 ftn. i 
Kosiusko, 141 ftn. i 



Kossuth, 370 

Ku-Klux Klans, 487, 502 

La Bahia, 334 

Labor, 514, 539, 540, 597; Bureau 
of, 540 

Labor party, 291, 495 

Lachine, 20, Zt^ 

Lafayette, 141 ftn. i, 143 

La Follette, Robert M., 611, 615 

Lamar, L. Q. C., 534 ftn. 2 

Land sharks, 512 

La Salle, 87, 89 ftn. i 

Las Casas, 20 

Lawrence, Kansas, 388, 390, 391 

Lecompton Constitution, 398, 402 

Lee, Charles, 136, 140 

Lee, Richard H., 133 

Lee, Robert E., joins Confederacy, 
426 ; invades Maryland, 448 ; 
invades Pennsylvania, 449 ; re- 
pulsed at Gettysburg, 450, 451 ; 
surrender, 464-466 

Leisler, Jacob, 61 ftn. i 

Lenox globe, 18 

Leopard affair, 2 1 6 

Lewis and Clark expedition, 210 

Lexington, Ky., 147 

Lexington, Mass., 123, 124, 125 

Liberator, The, 317, 318 

Liberia, 316 

Liberty party, 324, 355 

Liliuokalani, Queen, 565 

Lincoln, Abraham, character, 400 ; 
position on slavery, 400, 415; 
debates with Douglas, 400, 401 ; 
at Cooper Union, 408, 409 ; 
nomination in 1860,411; elec- 
tion, 412; inauguration, 421; 
danger in Washington, 427 ftn. 2 ; 
relation to Congress, 439, 439 
ftn. 3 ; reconstruction plans, 
446 ftn. 1, 478 ; message of 1863, 
453; reelection, 461 ; at Hamp- 
ton Roads, 464 ; in Richmond, 
464 ; assassination, 467 ; on 
emancipation, 470, 471; reply 
to Greeley, 471 ftn. 2 ; issues 
Emancipation Proclamation, 47 2, 
473 ; on negro suffrage, 486 ftn. i 

Little Big Horn, massacre, 517 
ftn. 2 



Index 



659 



Livingstone, Robert R., 208, 209, 

234 
London Company, 29, 33 
Long, John D., 577 
Longstreet, General, 451 
Lopez, 372 
Louisburg, 93, loi 
Louisiana, 87, 94, 211 ftn. i, 310 
Louisiana Purchase, 208-211, 240, 

256 ftn. I, 379 
Lovejoy, EHjah, 324 
Lowell, James Russell, 318 ftn. i, 

348, 419, 469, 491 ftn. 4 
Lower Counties, the Three, 65 
Loyalists, see Tories 
Lundy, Benjamin, 316 
Lundy's Lane, battle of, 220 
Lyon, Captain Nathaniel, 426 ftn. i 

McClellan, General George 13., 

440, 441, 447, 461 
McCulloch vs. Maryland, 534 
McDonough, Thomas, 220 
McDowell, General Irving, 439, 

McKinley, William, 550, 553 ftn. i, 

569, 571, 576, 583, 592 
McKinley Bill, the, 550, 551 
Macon's bill, 217 
Madison, James, 168, 169, 202, 216, 

217, 219, 223, 230, 237, 238, 249, 

250 
Magellan, Ferdinand, 14, 15 
Maine, 35, 48, 312, 313, 337 
Maine., the, 576 
Malvern Hill, battle of, 441 
Manassas, battle of, 439 
Manhattan, 59 
Manila, 102, 581 
Manila Bay, battle of, 577, 578 
Marcy, William L., 292, 372, 373 
Marietta, 165 
Marquette, 87 

Marshall, John, 201, 212, 233, 397 
Maryland, 53, 55, 161, 427, 428 
Mason, James M., 442, 454 ftn. 2 
Mason, John, 48 

Mason and Dixon's line, 64 ftn. i 
Massachusetts, 39, 41-43, 49, 50, 

51, 60, 112, 118, 120-123 
Matamoras, 344 
Maximilian, of Austria, 497 



Mayflower compact, 37, 46 ftn. i 
Meade, General George, 450, 451, 

452 ftn. 2, 458 
Mecklenburg Declaration, 133 

ftn. I 
Mercantile theory, 70 
Mercator, 13, 19 
Merit system, 525 
Mexican War, 342-345* 347> 348 
Mexico, 16, 332, 335, 338, 342, 345, 

347, 497, 604 ftn. I, 616 ftn. 2 
Midnight judges, 204 
Miles, General Nelson A., 581 
Mills Bill, 537, 538 
Miquelon, 102 
Mississippi River, 17, 87, 94, 245, 

444-446 
Mississippi territory, 247, 309 
Missouri, 310, 311, 313, 388,389, 

426 ftn. I, 429 
Missouri Compromise, 312-315, 

352ftn.2, 353, 381,383 
Mitchell, John, 596 
Mobile, 461 
Monitor, the, 443 
Monmouth, battle of, 140 
Monroe, James, 200, 209, 215, 224, 

230, 231, 236, 238, 241, 242 
Monroe Doctrine, 242, 243, 497, 

566, 567, 604, 605 
Montcalm, Marquis, loi 
Monterey, 344, 357 
Montgomery, Ala., 414 
Montgomery, Richard, 130 
Montreal, 20, 83, 102 
Morgan, J. P., 559, 560, 609 
Morris, Gouverneur, 162, 206, 329 
Mount Vernon, 155, 166, 193 
Muck-raking, 611 
Mugwumps, 526 
Mulligan letters, 530, 530 ftn. i 
MUnster, 19 
Murfreesboro, battle of, 455 ftn. i 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 202, 208, 209, 

213, 217, 219, 221, 239 
Napoleon III, 436, 454 ftn. 2, 497 
Nashville, 365, 463 
National-Republican party, 265 
Naturalization Act, 202 
Navigation Acts, 70, 71, 108, 112, 

120 



66o 



Index 



Navy of United States, 201, 219, 

221, 230, 546, 554, 577 
Nebraska, 380 
Negro suffrage, 48 5, 486 ftn. 1,489, 

550 ftn. I 
Negroes, 72,3o6,48o,488,6i9ftn. i 
New Amsterdam, 59, 76 
New England, 35, 39, 72, ']t^, 94, 2 1 6, 

219, 223, 230, 235, 260, 272, 304 
New England, Confederation of, 

49, 60 
New England, Council for, 48 
New Hampshire, 48, 49 
New Haven, 47 
New Jersey, 63, 137, 168 
New Mexico, 344, 359, 615 ftn. i 
" New Nationalism," the, 61 5 ftn. 2 
New Netherland, 49, 59, 61 
New Orleans, 89, 208, 222, 446 
New York, 58, 59, 61, 62, 90, 136, 

137, 155' 161 
Newfoundland, 93 
Niagara, 94 
Nicaragua, 600, 601 
Nicolet, Jean, 87 
Nobel prize, 607 ftn. 2 
Nonintercourse Act, 216, 217 
Norsemen, 9 ftn. i 
North, Lord, 119, 138, 150 
Northwest Ordinance, 165, 166, 

307 
Nueces River, 343 
Nullification, 281, 298 

Oglethorpe, James, 66 

Ohio, 310 

Ohio Company, of Virginia, 95 ; of 

Massachusetts, 165 
Ohio valley, 95, 97 
Oklahoma, 549 ftn. i 
Old Dominion, -i^-^ 
Old Hickory, 258 
Old Rough and Ready, 354 
Olney, Richard, 566 
Omnibus Bill, see Compromise of 

1850 
Ontario, Lake, 86 
Orders in Council, 217, 219 
Oregon, 210,331,332, 338,341,342, 

353 
Oregon, the, 579 ftn. i 
Ostend Manifesto, 373 



Oswego, 152 

Otis, James, 71, 112 ftn. i, 114, 121 

Pacific Ocean, 14, 14 ftn. i 

Packenham, General, 222 

Paine, Thomas, 132 

Palma, Estrada, 586 

Palmer, J. M., 571 ftn. i 

Palo Alto, battle of, 344 

Palos, 5 

Panama, 15, 262, 264, 276, 371, 602 

Panama tolls, 616 ftn. 2 

Pan-American Congress, 553, 603 

ftn. 2 
Pan-American Exposition, 592 
Panic, of 1837, 288; of 1873, 494 

ftn. 2 
Parcel post, 615 ftn. i 
Paris, Treaty of 1763, 102 ; of 1783, 

152-155; of 1898, 582 
Parker, Alton B., 605 
Parker, Captain John, 124 
Parker, Theodore, 408 ftn. i 
Parliament, 107, loS, no, 115, 121, 

124 
Parsons' Cause, 114 
Parties, political, 293 ftn. i 
Paternalism, 85, 625 
Pathfinder, see Fremont 
Patrons of husbandry, see Grangers 
Patroons, 59 

Payne- Aldrich Bill, 614 ftn. i 
Peace Conference of 1861 , 4i8ftn.i 
Peking, 589 

Pemberton, General, 451 
Pendleton Act, 525, 526 
Peninsular campaign, 440, 441 
Penn, William, 63, 64, 65 
Pennsylvania, 63-66 
Pension bills, 544, 544 ftn. i, 546 
Pepperell, Colonel William, 93 
Percy, Lord, 125 
Perdido River, 237 
Perry, Oliver H., 220 
Perryville, battle of, 455 ftn. i 
Personal- Liberty acts, 385, 404 
Peru, 16 
Petersburg, 464 
Philadelphia, 64, 122, 140, 500 
Philippines, 15, 474 ftn. i, 577, 578, 

581, 582, 584, 585 
Pickett's charge, 451 



hidex 



66 1 



Pierce, Franklin, 367, 381,391,392 

Pilgrims, 35, 253 

Pinckney, C. C, 200, 211, 271 

Pinckney, Thomas, 199 

Pinckney, William, 215 

Pitcairn, Major, 124 [152 

Pitt, William, 99, 107, no, 116, 117, 

Pizarro, 16 

Piatt, Thomas, 516, 524 

Piatt Amendment, 586 

Plymouth colony, 35-39, 52 

Plymouth Company, 29, 35 

Ptolemy, 4, 12 [346 

Polk, James K., 339, 340, 341, 343, 

Pontiac, 113, 146 

Pooling, 542 ftn. i 

Pope, General John, 446, 447 

Popular Sovereignty, see Squatter 

sovereignty 
Populist party, 556 
Port Hudson, 446, 452 
Port Royal, 90 
Porter, Horace, 459 ftn. 2 
Porto Rico, 15, 581, 582, 586, 587 
Portolaiii^ 4 

Portsmouth, Treaty of, 607 [ftn. i 
Post Office Department, 76, 77, 177 
Pottawatomie Creek, 391 
President, 176, 177, 178, 204 
Presidential Succession Act, 535 
Prisons in Civil War, 476 
Privy Council, 53 
Proclamation line, 144 
Proclamation of neutrality, 194, 195 
Progressive party, 615 
Proprietary colonies, 52 ff. [551 
Protection, 267, 268, 271, 276, 550, 
Providence, 44 
Public lands, 235, 246, 279, 287, 

288, 512 
Pueblos, 23, 24 
Pullman strike, 562 
Pure Food and Drugs Law, 625 
Puritans, 40, 42, 72, 74 

Quakers, see Friends 
.^Quebec, 83, 85, 100, loi, 102, 130 
Quincy, Josiah, 330 
Quitrents, 53, 57 

Railroads, 265, 266, 291, 368, 369, 
512, 574, 540, 606 



Raleigh, Sir Walter, 21, 22 
Randolph, Edmund, 50, 132 
Randolph, John, 270, 273, 308 ftn. :: 
Reciprocity, 553, 553 ftn. i, 605 

615 ftn. I 
Reclamation Act, 598 
Reconcentration camps, 575 
Reconstruction, 478-489, 494 
Reed, Thomas B., 545, 547, 573 
Referendum, 612, 613 
Republican party, 265, 386, 387, 
393-395' 410, 429, 493, 510, 511, 
521, 529, 530, 552,614 
Resaca de la Palma, battle of, 344 
Resumption of specie payments, 5 1 9 
Revere, Paul, 124 
Revolution, American, 1 1 2, 136-1 55 
Rhode Island, 44, 167, 171 
Richelieu, Cardinal, 81 
Richmond, 439, 464 
Rio Grande River, 342, 343 
Rio Janeiro, 603 ftn. 2 
Roanoke Island, 21 
Robertson, James, 145, 149 
Robinson, Charles, 390 
Rock of Chickamauga, 457 
Rockingham, Marquis of, 116 
Roman Catholics, 55, 56 
Roosevelt, Theodore, on Revolu- 
tion, 112; on civil service, 525; 
Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 
577 ; lieutenant colonel, 580 ; 
career, 593, 594 ; policy as 
President, 595 ; on corpora- 
tions, 596, 606; on labor, 597; 
on conservation, 597-599 ; on 
Panama, 600 ftn. i, 601 ; on 
Monroe Doctrine, 604 ; reelec- 
tion, 605 ; receives Nobel prize, 
607 ; trip abroad, 608 ; crusade 
for reform, 610; leads Progres- 
sive party in 191 2, 61 5 ; political 
principles, 615 ftn. 1; vote, 616 
ftn. I 
Root, Elihu, 603 ftn. 2 
Rosecrans, General, 454, 455, 

455 ftn. I 
Rough Riders, 579 
Royal provinces, 67, 68 
Rush, Richard, 241 
Russell, Lord John, 498 
Russia, 241, 499, 607 



662 



Index 



Sabine River, 240, 333 

St. Lawrence River, 20, 82, 100 

St. Leger, General, 137 

St. Lusson, 87 

St. Marks, 238 

St. Marys, 55 

St. Pierre, 102 

Salem, 40, 49, 124 

Salisbury, Lord, 555, 566, 567 

Samoan Islands, 553 

Sampson, William T., 578 " 

San Ildefonso, Treaty of, 208 

San Jacinto River, 334 

San Martin, General, 239 

San Salvador, 7 

Sandys, Sir Edwin, 32 

Santa Anna, 334, 345 

Santa Fe, 344 

Santiago, 579, 580, 581 

Santo Domingo, 500, 604 

Saratoga, battle of, 138 

Sault Sainte Marie, 87 

Savannah, 66, 140, 463 

Scalawags, 480 ftn. i, 487 

Schenectady, 92 

Schley, Winfield S., 579 ftn. i, 
580 

Schofield, General, 458 

Schurz, Carl, 493 ftn. i 

Scott, Winfield, 345, 367, 423, 440 

Secession, 413, 420 

Senatorial courtesy, 180 

Separatists, 36, 41 

Seven Years' War, 97 ftn. i 

Seventh-of-March speech, 360 

Sevier, John, 145, 149 

Seward, William H., on Compro- 
mise of 1850, 361 ; on Dred 
Scott case, 397 ; rejected at 
Chicago, i860, 411; Secretary 
of State, 411 ftn. I ; on Tre?it 
affair, 442 ; purchases Alaska, 

499 
Shafter, General, 579, 581 
Sharpsburg, battle of, 448 
Shawmut, 40 
Shays's Rebellion, 164 
Shenandoah valley, 441 ftn. i 
Sheridan, General P. H., 458 ftn. i, 

461, 464 
Sherman, General W. T., 456, 458, 

460, 462, 463, 466 ftn. 2, 497 



Sherman, John, 519, 535, 543, 590 
Sherman Anti-Trust Act, 538 ftn. 2 
Sherman Silver Purchase Act, 

551. 559 
Shiloh, battle of, 444, 445 
Shipping, American, 214, 214 ftn. i, 

603 ftn. 2 
Shirley, Governor, 96 
Silver, coinage of, 517. 518, 551, 

569 

Sitting Bull, 517 ftn. i 

Sixteen to one, 570 

Slave trade, 17, 32, in, 170, 304, 
307» 309' 359' 406 ftn. i 

Slaves and slavery, 17, 32, 66, 170, 
298, 312-319, 325, 330, 334, 353, 
356, 363. 402, 405» 418 ftn. I, 
419. 433.469. 471.474 

Slidell, John, 343, 442, 454 ftn. 2 

Sloat, Commodore, 344 

Smith, John, 29, 31, 35 

Smuggling, 7 1 

Socialism, 324 ftn. i, 618, 619, 620, 
620 ftn. I 

Soule, Pierre, 373 

South, colonial, 75, 76 ; aristocracy 
in, 261 ; condition in i860, 431- 
435; solid, 523; new, 547, 548, 
573, 620 

South Carolina, 281, 282, 413, 
486 ftn. 2 

South River, 60 

Spain, explorations and colonies, 
13-17, 21, 58, 59, 66; relations 
to West, 102, 163, 195; in 
American Revolution, 140, 150; 
Pinckney Treaty, 199, 209; 
sells Florida to the United 
States, 237-240 ; boundary 
treaty of 1819, 331; in Texas, 
333 ftn. 2 ; in Cuba, 372, 574, 
576? 577 ; war with United 
States, 574-583 ; results, 588 

Speaker of the Llouse, 180, 546, 614 

Specie circular, 2S7 

Spoils system, 292 

Spotswood, Alexander, 94 

Squatter sovereignty, 354, 359, 
380, 401 

Stalwarts, 522, 522 ftn. i 

Stamp Act, 113-116 

Standpatters, 614, 614 ftn. 3 



Index 



66- 



Stanton, Edwin M., 440 ftn. 2, 469, 

490, 502 
Star of the West, the, 423 
Star routes, 493 
Stephens, Alexander H., 410, 414, 

415' 429' 435' 464. 481 
Steuben, Baron, 141 ftn. i 
Stevens, John L., 565 
Stevens, Thaddeus, 482 ftn. 2, 502 
Stowe, Harriet B., 384 
Strikes, 539 ftn. 2, 562, 563, 596 
Stuyvesant, Peter, 59, 60 
Subtreasury Act, 288 
Sugar and Molasses Act, 108, 

112 
Sumner, Charles, 319, 392, 393, 

442 ftn. I, 498 
Superior, Lake, 87 
Supreme Court, 179, 233, 234, 

561, 564, 587 
Susquehannocks, 34 
Sweden, 60 ftn. i, 81 

Taft, William H., 584, 585, 607, 

614, 615, 616, 625 
Talleyrand, 200, 209 
Tallmadge amendment, 310, 3JI 
Taney, Roger B., 285, 286, 397 
Tanner, Corporal, 546 ftn. 2 
Tariff, 190, i9oftn. i; of 181 6, 
230, 269 ; theory of, 267, 268, 
269; of 1824, 270; opposed by 
the South, 270, 271, 273, 274; 
of 1828, 271-273 ; of 1832, 281 ; 
of 1833, 282 ; of 1846, 396 ; after 
Civil War, 520 ; under Cleve- 
land, 537 ; McKinley Bill, 550 ; 
Wilson-Gorman Bill, 560 ; with 
Philippines, 587 ftn. i ; Dingley 
Bill, 590; Payne-Aldrich Bill, 
614 ftn. 1,615; Underwood Bill, 
Tarry town, 141 [616 ftn. 2 

Taylor, Zachary, 343, 344, 345, 

354'355'356, 362, 433ftn. I 
Tecumseh, 218 
Teller, Senator, 570 ftn. 2, 577 
Tennessee, 146, 309, 446 ftn. i, 

478, 483 
Tenure of Office Act, 490, 534 
Texas, 256, 256 ftn. i, 329, 333, 

334' 335' 338' 340, 34I' 348 
Thayer, Eli, 388 



Thomas, General G. H., 456, 463 
Thomas amendment, 312 
Thompson, Secretary, 416, 420 
Ticonderoga, loi, 127 
Tilden, Samuel, 495, 496 
Tippecanoe, 218, 297 
Toleration Act, Maryland, 56 
Toombs, Robert, 3 58, 394, 434 ftn. i 
Topeka, 389 
Toqueville, Alexis de, 172, 

333 ftn. 2, 430 
Toral, General, 580 
Tories (Loyalists), 129, 135-138, 

M7' 152, 153' 156 
Toscanelli, 5, 6 

Townshend Acts, 117, 118, 119 
T?-eiit affair, 442 
Trenton, battle of, 137 
Trist, Nicholas, 346 
Trusts, 538, 538 ftn. 2, 541, 573, 

596, 610, 610 ftn. I 
Try on, Governor, 131 
Turks, 4 
Turner, Nat, 318 
Tweed ring, 492, 495 
Tyler, John, 336, 337, 341 

" L'ncle Tom's Cabin," 384, 384 

ftn. 2 
Underground railroad, 365,366,375 
P^nderwood tariff, 616 ftn. 2 
Pinion Pacific Railroad, 512, 513 
United States, conditions in 1789, 
184, 186; in 181 5, 236, 237; in 
1825, 260, 261 ; in 1850, 367- 
370, 395; in 1861, 431, 432; 
after the war, 520, 521 ; in 1890, 
547; in 1900, 591, 592; in 1904, 
624-627 
P^pshur, Secretary, 337, 339 
P'tah, 359, 549 ftn. I 
P'trecht, Treaty of, 71, 93, 93 ftn. i 

Vagrancy laws, 4S0 
Vallandigham, C. P., 449, 449 ftn. I 
Valley Forge, 138 
Valparaiso, 555 [355 

Van Buren, 279, 288, 295, 297, 336, 
Vanderbilt, Cornelius, 371 
Vardaman, 619 
Venezuela, 566, 567, 573 
Vera Cruz, 345 



664 






Index 



Vergennes, 139, 150 

Vermont, 164, 310 

Verrazano, 20, 82 

Vespucius, 11,12 

Vicksburg, 446, 449, 451, 452 ftn. i 

Victoria, Queen, 436 

Vincennes, 148, 149 

Virginia, 21, 28, 31, 32, 33, 114, 

118, 161, 168, 202, 203, 304, 

426 
Virginiiis affair, 500 
Von Hoist, H. E., 278 

Wabash case, 541 

Wade-Davis bill, 478 ftn. i 

Wakarusa River, 391 

Waldseemiiller, 12, 13 

Walker, R. J., 396, 398 

Walpole, Robert, 71, 93, 109, no 

War, cost of, 588 

War hawks, 218 

Warren, Joseph, 121 

Washington, Booker T., 596 

Washington, city of, 221, 428, 440 

Washington, George, in colonial 
wars, 97, 99; in Revolution, 127, 
129, 132, 135 ff., 155; on Con- 
stitution, 166, 167; President, 
187, 192, 193, 195 ; farewell ad- 
dress, 199, 243; command of 
French war, 201 ; opinion on 
slavery, 308 ftn. 2 

Washington, Treaty of, 498, 502 

Watauga River, 145-147 

Weaver, J. B., 556, 557 

Webster, Daniel, on Northwest 
Ordinance, 166; on Alexander 
Hamilton, 189; on growth of 
West, 249; career, 252, 253; 
reply to Hayne, 280 ; on aboli- 
tion, 319; on slaveiy, 337, 375; 
Ashburton Treaty, 337, 350 ; on 
Compromise of 1850, 360, 361 ; 
Secretary of State, 370, 372 

Welles, Secretary, 442 



West, growth and influence, 245, 
246, 249, 261, 262, 287, 328-330, 
349' 351. 431 ftn. I, 506-508 

West Point, 141 

West Virginia, 436 

Weyler, General, 575 

Wheeler, General Joseph, 590 

Whigs, 294-297, 337, 385 

Whisky Rebellion, 199 ftn. i 

White, Hugh L., 279 

Whitman, Marcus, 332, 350 

Whitman, Walt, 468 ftn. 2 

Whittier, J. G., 388,- 395 

Wigfall, Senator, 419 

Wilderness campaign, 459 • 

Wilderness Road, 148 

Wilkes, Captain, 442 

Wilkinson, James, 212 

William III, 52, 62,67 ftn. i, 71,91 

Williams, Roger, 44, 56 

Wilmot Proviso, 352 

Wilson-Gorman Bill, 560 

Wilson, Woodrow, elected Presi- 
dent, 616; vote, 616 ftn. i; 
policy, 616 ftn. 2 

Winchester, battle of, 461 

Winthrop, John, 40 

Wirt, William, 293 

Wisconsin, 611, 613 

Wise, HenryA.,321, 393,432 ftn. i 

Witchcraft, 49 

Wolfe, General James, loi, 102 

Wood, General Leonard, 586 

World's Fair at Chicago, 563 ftn. i 

Writs of Assistance, 112, 117 

Wyoming valley, 164 

X Y Z Affair, 200, 201 ftn. i 

Yancey, William, 409, 415 
York, Duke of, 53 ftn. 2, 58 
Yorktown, 142, 143, 144 
Yulee, Senator, 421 

Zenger, Peter, 78 



LRBJL?? 



1 



